Autumn Prayers
Autumn moves in with its usual
quiet grace. I took note the other day that the shrubs and trees have become
peppered with color. I smile to myself and think of my own autumn-of-life with
hair becoming peppered gray—and the next thing I knew, almost white! I had
changed and like the trees, in due season and incrementally.
In Michigan,
and throughout the Midwest, there are visual seasonable
changes in nature. There are also expectations of what each season brings. The
greening in spring and the coloring dormancy before winter, the migration of
birds into a region and their eventual return to warmer climates as the
temperatures drop, are just a couple of the things I know and anticipate each
year.
I like the rhythm of it all,
when everything is not always the same. This shift leads me to alter my
perspective, to see things differently, to pray in different ways. The
energetic prayers of springtime are not the same as those said during times of
slowing down entering winter.
I find that age—young or mature—dictates
my response to change. The sudden shifts that took place in my youth would be
harder to manage these days. I like change in moderation and can adapt well
with a show of grace. It is dramatic changes that are jolting; when the scenery
becomes unfamiliar and uncertainty skews my view.
There was a time as an adult
when I came to fully embrace Catholicism. It was then that I was jolted by the
reality of my relativistic decisions as compared to the new scenery of faith,
and found myself disoriented in my ethics.
The prayers of my early years,
chronologically and spiritually, were vigorous, eager, and thrust unto the Holy
with certainty of specified resolution. The prayers that I now pray are much
less frenetic and are presented with fullness and patience. I have no less
confidence that they are being heard, but my expectations of how they will be
answered are less defined.
Like
the gentle, slow and steady pace of changing leaves at the end of a season, my
prayers are slowly spoken, and hopefully more graceful in their petition. Seasons change as do our lives
and how we pray. We live in all our seasons with assurance of the rhythm—day by
day, familiar with the pace.
...I
try to make informed decisions but tend to give up about half way through the
learning curve, feeling less illuminated than when I started. I have found over
the years that after an election, what I’d hoped was accurate information was
advertising in the name of game and gain... To read more, please see my latest column on Patheos.
