The season We're In

Today is the Fall Equinox, and here in Maryland, it’s raining.

It almost feels like an announcement. Fall is here.

The air is cooler, the days are getting shorter, and the rain has been falling for hours. In a few days, it will warm up again. The trees won’t all change at once. There will be warm afternoons tucked between cooler mornings. The season will take its time becoming itself.

I think there’s something worth paying attention to in that.

We move through seasons like this too.

There are times when we are full of energy and ready to move. Other times we need to slow down, gather ourselves, or simply be still for a while.

I’ve spent plenty of time trying to rush through the seasons I was in. Trying to get somewhere else before I had really been where I was.

Fall reminds me that change doesn’t work that way.

It happens gradually. Quietly. Sometimes we don't even notice it until we look around and realize the landscape has changed.

That’s what I’ll be exploring in class this week—our own rhythms, the places where we are rushing, the places where we feel stuck, and what it might feel like to stop fighting the season we’re in.

The rain is doing what rain does.

The trees will do what trees do.

And we get to take our time becoming, too.