Right Endings

by Sue Haslehurst

Autumn is a season of endings, flowers fading, leaves dying and falling to the ground, annual plants rotting down, the warmth of the summer giving way to chill and to winds. It can be a time to think about pain and loss.

And yet it is also a season of endings that are right, a season of completion and completeness. The summer’s flowers have paved the way for the autumn’s fruit, for berries, seedpods, nuts, fluffy seeds flying through the air and all sorts of food to be eaten or stored away. Even the richly coloured leaves that are simply ending as they dry out and fall to the ground, even they light up the autumn with an intense last glow of beauty.

So at this time of year we can also look back with gratitude over the summer and be thankful for the fruit brought to ripeness in the autumn. We may dwell on the themes of harvest festival, giving thanks for God’s silent miracles of growth and fruitfulness and for the stores of goodness and nourishment laid up for the coming winter.

Noel Moules, founder and director of the Workshop course, likes to say that “the seed is in the fruit” and John’s gospel reminds us that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it falls it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). So autumn is not just a time of endings, whether that be endings that hurt or completions that nourish, but also a time where even though the winter stands between us and next spring, the seeds of next year’s new beginnings are already with us, in the fruit of this summer or floating in the wind or dormant in the nuts and seeds scattered through the compost of the fallen leaves.

And of course for those of us who have spent formative years in an education system where the new school year begins in September, autumn may also have a scent of a new phase in our life: new challenges, new people, new stationery...

Autumn can be an opportunity to focus on endings that feel wrong, that need to be mourned or protested or resisted or brought before God in prayer. This season of beauty and promise, of right endings, completions and fruitfulness can be a time to celebrate the fruit of hard work, prayer and God’s grace. And, as we reflect on the promise of the hidden seed and the protection and nourishment which the fallen leaves will provide, it can be a time too to pray and work for the germination of little seeds of hope.