On Saturday, September 23, 2023, at 2:50 AM Eastern Time, we in the Northern Hemisphere will cross the threshold of the Autumn Equinox. I wrote this reflection a few years ago and thought some of you might enjoy reading it to recognize and celebrate this passage. When my brother and I sold our parents’ house and closed the door behind us for the last time, it was like stepping into a deepening season of our lives.

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Like Autumn Light

It was the house we had grown up in and its now empty corners echoed a thousand joys. My brother and I stood on its threshold, ready for the final time to close the door behind us. Mom had died eight months before, following Dad to a heaven we believed in. Now the house had been sold, emptied, cleaned and blessed. It was time to move on.

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That moment on the threshold
is a still-shot in the memory
of those long-ago days.
Such a moment is the tightwire
between memory and promise;
the border between regret and gratitude.
It is the passageway
between fear and trust.
It is the line we draw
between loneliness and independence.

Such a moment is like the soft, grey stillness
just before dawn
when everything is possible
but nothing is yet real.
It is an exquisite time
when life invites us to become
all and more than we had ever been.

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The days of autumn are like that threshold. They invite us to a second version of ourselves. They allow us to pause on time’s lintel, to assess the strengths gathered through the years, and to enter the power of our harvest days.

Autumn skies, beautiful at dusk, encourage us to explore our shadows without fear or hurry. Glorious sunsets convince us that light, like life, never dies. It only changes.

This is a grace-filled liminal time where we might recall all the many doorways we have crossed on the journey to who we are.

It is a time we might reflect on the invitations offered at each crossing and who we have become because of our yeses and our nos.

It is a time to wait for new light, but still to bless the rich darkness that holds the deep roots of our life.

It is a time to realize that we lift our foot for the next step purely on the music of all that has been given to us.

In the autumn times of our lives, let us pause to allow the Light to pool in our souls. That deepening has so much to offer us as we pass through the doorways of time.

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Music: The Fallen Leaves of Autumn – Tim Janis