Hello and Happy September everyone!  A friend said to me recently that the seasons, particularly the spring (and particularly the rabbits in his yard in the spring), affirm his belief that “life trends towards hope.”  I like this idea, though not, perhaps, for the reason my friend does.  Seasons are cyclical, and cycles don’t really “trend” towards anything except repeating themselves.  So one could suggest that the exuberant hopefulness of spring is not more or less important or meaningful than the still darkness of the winter.  And vice versa.

[Note on the art pictured here: it is a photograph of a print by Carol McCrady that I have in my office.  It’s called “Medieval Seasons,” and you can see more of her exquisite art on her web site.]

This isn’t a depressing perspective; just a realistic one, and one that I’ve learned a lot about from writers like Parker Palmer and David Whyte.  They talk about the danger of human beings’ desire to accept only those parts of ourselves that are light, expansive, “up.”  We do a deep disservice to ourselves when we live this way, because we’re making very little internal space for the times when we are not all these things.  In the words of the fabulous singer songwriter John Prine, “That’s the way that the world goes round/up one day the next you’re down/it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown/that’s the way that the world goes round.”

I love the line: “it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown” because it’s so ridiculously true.  I had to remind myself of this in the last few weeks when our entire university town was going through the transition from summer to fall:  no students/no school—> thousands of students/lots of school. 

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