Fall is often referred to as a season of harvest, a time to gather what has ripened and matured. Agriculturally, the fall harvest is already yielding some lovely apples and kabocha squash; pomegranates and pumpkins are soon to follow.
Photo courtesy of JLR
Spiritually, the fall harvest is celebrated on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The sukkah (hut or shelter) is referred to in the liturgy as sukkat shlomecha, the shelter of peace and wholeness.
There is a felt sense of shelter, of refuge and peace and wholeness, that comes after a period of hard work. Planting and caring for a garden is a commitment of labor and love, as is tending to the garden of our own inner life.
Where do you find refuge and peace? I invite you to feast heartily on the delicious fruits of your hard work.
Love Wants to Know How
Autumn comes with its riot of death,
its clarion bells of color,
drives the living green to ground
even as it thins the veil between worlds.
The visible and invisible walk now together
with arms outstretched over fields
where workers hasten to the harvest
none may divide against itself.
So: where are you in this?
How long do you loiter
between the said and unsaid,
the done and undone,
between the half and true rhyme
of a life answering a life?
Geese mark the sky with dark wedges,
call with harsh tongues
to what thrives at the margins
of all we so reluctantly receive.
Go now,
quickly and with great force,
toward what burns in your dreams
at the dying of the year.
Who can say?
Perhaps you reap the whirlwind,
perhaps the harvest—
but is it ever enough to not know
the bonds and bounds of what will one day
forsake you for the grave?
—Anonymous