“For each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.”

Autumn, my favorite time of year, came and ended early this year – disrupting my much anticipated moments of relishing the peace that settles into our tourist mecca in the waning days of summer’s glorious reign. With a bone-chilling gale-force wind and a threat of white precipitation, my attention was caught, if only briefly, as warm days with gold and rust-hued pleasantries returned to soothe my shaken spirit. And for a week, all was right in the world! Autumn’s cool crisp mornings invigorated my body and brilliant sunsets disguised the encroaching darkness that would soon confine and redefine my activities.

And then, as is so often the case in life, just like that it was gone. Almost overnight the golden glory in the trees was stripped away, and the lollygaggers that had yet to debut their autumn-hued wardrobe were frozen in time, left to wither and shrivel to a boring brown descent. The vibrancy of life was interrupted by the suddenness of death – a painful ending.

“We were robbed!” some, including me, would exclaim. An air of solemnity permeated gatherings. Moments of shared panic ensued as readying for the long nights of winter was packed into already too-short days instead of a few leisurely, festive weeks. And yet, as abrupt as her arrival was with her fierce demands for attention that shocked my system, I find comfort in autumn’s whimsy, and no less so this year.

Of all the seasons we are so fortunate to observe, autumn’s nature feels most promising to me. I have come to realize that there is a quiet, if not hidden, beauty in the dying that takes place – in this season and in life. Life is a continual series of dying’s – endings – that give way to seeds of new life. Parker Palmer, an American author, educator, and speaker, eloquently describes the grace of this truth: “The hopeful notion that new life is hidden in dying is surely reinforced by the visual glories of autumn. (Indeed,) what artist would paint a deathbed scene with the vibrant and vital palette nature uses?”

We often associate the radiance of springtime with the beginning of life. We celebrate the emergence of tender shoots and sprigs of green from the cold, barren, snow-covered earth; beginning a cycle that winds slowly down to the rustle of dying leaves that have fallen back to earth. But something first had to die – come to an end – so that a newer life, fed and strengthened by whatever has been lost, could come alive in its place. It is in the radiant dying in autumn and the barren sleep of winter, that the seeds for the new life born in spring and lived in summer, are first imagined.

Resurrection can only come through death. Fr. Richard Rohr describes this passageway to new life: “Jesus willingly died—and Christ arose—yes, still Jesus, but now including and revealing everything else in its full purpose and glory.” It is in the dyings of life when our full humanity comes to life. In truth, life is born through death. We experience these dyings more often than we – at least on the surface – realize. Ideas, plans, and philosophies die back to engender new ones. When we graduate high school and college that season of life dies as we enter the next stage of life in adulthood. When relationships begin and end, when we marry, when we have children, when we leave a job or a neighborhood, when we begin a new endeavor or pursue a different direction, a part of us dies. Must die. Must end. You can choose to view the dyings and painful endings in life as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression, and resentment, or you choose to let them be passages to something new, something wider, something deeper. With each of these dyings, we are given the opportunity for new life; they allow us to let go and lead us to discover new directions, new purposes. With every ending, we are given a passageway to something more.

That’s much more hopeful than the idea that life, the moment it appears, begins winding its way inescapably toward death. If you think about it, everything alive in the world and in us is made up of things that have passed before us, gone about the business of dying.

We live in a culture that wants light without darkness, the radiance and revelry of spring and summer without the demands and dying of autumn and winter, the pleasures of life without the pangs of death. But the longer I walk this earth, the more I have come to realize that the fullness of life can only be gained in the tension of this paradox. Life is not diminished by darkness or death. It is made more organic, more wholehearted, more resilient and resplendent. The endless interplay of darkness and light, the dying and rising, the endings and beginnings, the autumns and springs of life remind me that everything is forever being made new.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. – Colossians 1:19-20

Let your light so shine!