The air is crisper, sharper, in the mornings now. Summer is over, and there's a definite feel of autumn around. Even if we didn't have the evidence of autumn fruits on the trees, that late riot and burst of colour in the garden and hedgerows, we would know it by the air, by the early fall of darkness. After a week away I meant to water the garden on the evening we arrived back, was distracted for a while, and when I was ready to go out and pick up the watering can, it was already dark.
We read these signs automatically, cut off from as we are- most of us living in towns- from a wider data base which comes from country living, with its myriad clues as to season, aridity, stress, fecundity, weather, and all the rest. No surprise then that the gospels are full of references to the signs all around in the landscape of Jesus' day, and that Jesus himself often refers to farmers, harvest, agricultural labourers, barns and much besides; it was all to hand, and his hearers would readily understand.
But he applied all this to the life of the spirit, for much of the time; the landscape, the weather, the activity of farmers, became a metaphor for the life, the health, of the soul. I wonder how good we are, in our self-sufficient, secular age, at taking the 'temperature' of our spirits? How we gauge 'a change in the air', and whether it presages a storm ahead, or something better? There are seasons of the soul just as much as there are seasons to the earth, and it can all be pretty nuanced; can you detect the shifts that are happening in your spirit, in your relationship with God? What's the forecast?
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