Like many of you, my relationship with fall has evolved over my lifetime. I looked forward to it as a child, because it meant jumping in the leaf piles. If I was lucky, I was allowed to rake a little bit too. Lucky me! As an adult, and especially as a busy parent to young children, fall was all about the obligation to try to keep my yard and sidewalk relatively leaf-free. Twenty years ago I moved to South Australia. Once there, I learned that the season between summer and winter is known as autumn rather than fall, since, for the most part, the leaves don’t fall. There’s no need to feed the birds, because they have a reliable food supply year round. A few oak trees had been transplanted from Europe, and it was fun to appreciate how those leaves turned, although not so colorfully since the climate is so mild.
Two years ago, I moved to this region that experiences all four seasons, often with a vengeance! In my first year, I found things to like about each season: I love summer evenings that stretch on and on. I love the quiet and peace after a snowfall, especially if I don’t have an urgent need to go anywhere. I love the explosion of flowering trees in the spring, along with that special color of green that’s unique to those first warming days. But far and away my favorite season is fall. I’m like a kid in a candy shop, constantly pulling my car over to gaze with wonder at one splendid tree after another. This weekend I’ll be hoping to plant some bulbs in the my garden for the spring, but I’m also planning to drive north to see the foliage at Fernwood and the surrounding areas. I know that in a month or two, all of these trees will be bare, and we may well have snow on the ground. But it’s a price I’m prepared to pay.
Two years after I was first struck with awe by the Michiana fall, I finally figured out what it is about the autumn that speaks to my heart so powerfully: I find the fall colors so lovely because they are also fleeting. As we watch the leaves turn from green to orange or yellow, we know that, inevitably, those leaves will drift down to the earth. It is already happening. It is one thing to gaze on a mountain peak or the ocean, knowing that it will be much the same next week or next year or even in a hundred years. It’s quite another thing to look at a maple tree with the awareness that it may well appear completely different in just a few days.
As I’ve been watching the slow transition from summer to winter, I’ve been reminded of something I learned from my Japanese studies teacher back in college. I knew that the Japanese have tremendous affection for the cherry blossom trees that bloom all over the country in the spring. What I learned from him is that, for the Japanese, the most beautiful sight of all is actually the cherry blossoms falling from the trees to the ground. Their beauty is utterly tied up in how ephemeral they are. In only a few days, the blossoms are gone, replaced by the green leaves that will take the trees through the summer. At the opposite end of the cycle, we embrace the magnificent colors of fall, knowing that it will come to an end very soon. And, of course, each of these tiny transitions reminds us of how fleeting our own lives are.
There is no word in the Bible for autumn. The contemporary Hebrew words stav appears exactly once in the Tanakh, in the Song of Songs, and appears to mean the rainy season. The land of Israel has a mediterranean climate, which means that its native trees do not lose their leaves in the winter. Actually, winter is the rainy season in Israel, which means that it is the time of year when the crops are growing and the land is at its greenest. I’m guessing our biblical ancestors could not imagine a world in which trees are stripped of their leaves for a significant part of the year, patiently waiting for the return of the spring.
And so the biblical authors use different metaphors to describe the briefness of our own lives here on earth. Psalm 90 describes our lives as a day, moving rapidly from morning to noon and, finally, to night. The rabbis speak of life as a passing shadow, transformed in an instant as a cloud changes its direction. We live so much of our lives without this awareness, moving from one day to the next and getting done what needs to happen. And then, one day, we look up and see that the trees are bare once more, and the transitory beauty of the fall is gone.
Psalm 90 prays that God will teach us to number our days so that we might attain a wise heart. It is a difficult and confronting reality that our days are numbered. And yet, it is only when we appreciate that our lives are limited that we are able fully to appreciate the preciousness of each day. And perhaps that is what it means to attain wise heart. Shabbat shalom!
