What is in a season?

It's turning autumnal here in Maine.  I've already spotted a few trees turning orange at the fringes (the maples in the swamps go first), and friends are boarding planes for college, and the mornings are cold and strewn with mist, and I'm sweating less than I was a month ago.  I find myself standing at the end of one season, on the doorstep of the next, and trying to decide if I want it to come.  The autumn weather is welcome, but not all that autumn means.  If only I could pick out the good bits and then move on to Christmas.

The word season comes to English from French, and to French from the Latin "sationem", meaning "to sow".  As a noun it came to mean the time of sowing.  From there it evolved to mean one of the four periods of the year: summer, autumn, winter, spring.  Then it took on also the meaning of "seasoned"--weathered, time- and-trial tested, true--or sown with salt, both to preserve life and to add flavour.

Life, as the year, is a series of seasons: a series of times when the weather changes, when different things are being sown, when some things are dying and some only appear to be, but have deep roots still pulsing and live, when salt is being added to the dish.  To each season its own:
 
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted:
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV) 

It is easy to hear half of this word:  I would love to say, "This is the time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather stones, to embrace, to seek, to keep, to sew, to speak, to love, to bring peace!" and take my red pen to strike out the rest.  This summer, for me, was such a season.  Though I look forward to the autumn, I think I may spy a few more hardships, a few more sufferings, a few more self-denials.  Nothing massive, but the little things, when totaled, weigh a good deal as well.  If I stand on tip-toe and peer over the top of autumn I see the winter, and Christmas, and everything it holds, and ache for that: but it is not yet.  Things come in time.  Right now, the time may be the dying, plucking, killing, breaking down, mourning, casting away, refraining from embracing time.  It may be the time for war.  It is not nearly as tragically poetic as it sounds.  It's grueling.  This may be the season to hope, to wait, to hang on.  It is probably not entirely one or the other--the usual blend is a little bit of both.  Every season, however dark and cold, holds many heights of joy.


From my view on the doorstep of autumn I cannot see far, but I can see the one who is sowing, and salting, and weaving every circumstance, and he is someone entirely worthy of my trust.