My New Favorite Season

Fall is my favorite season. This is a new development—summer has always been my número uno, with Fall a (very) distant fourth. I despised the shortening of days and the flagrant display of death and loss. As far as I was concerned, the brief and blazing gold of the ginkgo was the only redeeming moment of the season.

Three years ago that started to change. I was on a train on another continent, and after so many years in the land of perennial summer (and youth) I think I was more ready to appreciate the golds and browns. It was then that I began to connect the dots between the glory of a season that had always looked like death to me: and was perhaps more primed to look past the death of winter to the raucous life of spring.

I find myself in the week between all of the scans and the meetings with doctors. I do not expect any big drama, but only the walking forward on this road where we can choose whether to mark time by scans, or by the colors of the leaves, or by the liturgical calendar of the church.

The scans are scheduled and regular. They are very familiar, but there is always some moment in the process where I turn the corner from equanimity to trauma. Sometimes it sneaks up on me, but I am noticing that the waves often start crashing with the injection of one or the other contrast solutions. I reach out my arm, an I.V. port is started, and All The Things are pushed in. Often in these times I have heard an echo of John 21:5 in my head: here I was stretching out my arms, and going where I did not want to go. Tuesday I pulled the full text out in one of the waiting rooms and found:

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”

What a beautiful and terrible thing to sit with on Tuesday. By what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after this, “Follow me.”

The stretching out of my arms for an I.V. is not death, of course. But it is part of a road marked by death. There is some trauma there, and some being led where I do not want to go. And so I am challenged to consider how, by weak parallel, I might glorify God in the experience. I hope to increasingly turn my eyes to the other sorts of death that might bring Him glory. Like maybe from Colossians 3:5:

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

There is so much that is earthly in me, more insidious and more painfully rooted out than cancer. Reflecting on how death might bring glory to God is helpful, as is the promise that immediately precedes the call to put to death what is earthly, indeed what the “therefore” is referencing: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” These are the sorts of reflections that now come to mind when I see a ginkgo. Death and life and kinds of death and glory and time passing and future hope. On the way home from church today, I drove past the only one I know of in Santa Barbara to see how it was coming along. It has started to turn but isn’t quite there yet…so I will return and hope to catch it in its glory.

These are some of the reasons why Fall is my new favorite season. I no longer think of the gold and crimson of autumn as all death and loss. Instead I see them as a bonus gift that shouts, “Hey look! There is a death that means glory, and we are not going to let it go unnoticed!” Here is a celebration that points to and promises the beauty that is spring. One season is a death and the other is a resurrection, but they are both glorious. And both say, “Follow me.”