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This past Sunday (October 4, 2020) I went for a walk with my friend Carol along part of the Winchell Trail, a largely unpaved trail that winds about 2.5 miles along the west bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, from Franklin Avenue to Minnehaha Park. Named after Newton Horace Winchell, Minnesota’s state geologist from 1872 to 1901, the Winchell Trail is touted as Minneapolis’ “first rustic hiking trail.”
As you can see from the images I share this evening, last Sunday was a beautiful autumn day to be out in nature.
Accompanying my photos is an excerpt from a reflection on autumn by Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr. Enjoy!
Autumn is a wondrous metaphor for the transformation that takes place in the human heart each season. When we notice a subtle change of light outside our windows, we know the dark season is near. Everything is being prepared for winter. Autumn calls us in from summer's playground and asks significant questions about our own harvest: What do we need to gather into our spiritual barns? What in our lives needs to fall away like autumn leaves so another life waiting in the wings can have its turn to live?
It is easy to read the human story in these autumn pages between summer and winter. This is the season that evokes nostalgia and pours longing into human hearts. Autumn speaks of connection and yearning, wisdom and aging, transformation and surrender, emerging shadows, and most of all, mystery. This is the season that touches our longing for home, for completion. We are invited to let go, to yield . . . yes, to die. We are encouraged to let things move in our lives. Let them flow on into some new life form just as the earth is modeling these changes for us.
The season of autumn will not stay with us forever. It will fall into the womb of winter. In this dark resting place another dimension of growth will reveal itself. Each season’s entrance and departure is part of the gracious turning of the circle of life. Autumn will return to the land and to our lives when it is time. The wheel keeps turning.
– Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr
Excerpted from their book, The Circle of Life:
The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons
Sorin Books, 2005
pp. 168-169
Excerpted from their book, The Circle of Life:
The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons
Sorin Books, 2005
pp. 168-169
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• A Prayer of Autumn Welcoming
• Autumn’s Wordless Message
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2016)
• Autumn Psalm
• Autumn Beauty
• Autumn Leaves
• Autumn Hues
• Autumn by the Creek
• From the River to the Falls
• Autumn Dance
• An Autumn Walk by Minnehaha Creek
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame!
• The Last of Autumn’s Hues
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
Image: Michael J. Bayly and Carol Masters.
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