The fall

I recently made a tour to southern and mid-coast Maine to view the fall foliage. Although it was not yet peak season, there was still a good bit of color in the leaves, and I enjoyed driving through the countryside and along the coast.

Fall always strikes me as a particularly beautiful season, as trees and other plants make their final statement of the year as they prepare to enter into winter hibernation. Beauty in the midst of decay is a theme that is echoed through forests and fields, in ponds and on the shore.

In the fall, life makes a statement, and my camera allows me to record that statement. What exactly is nature telling us at this time of year? Certainly that life has its own cycle as inevitable as the earth rotating around the sun; that a period of quiet waiting will happen before the creative outburst of spring; that there can be beauty in the ending of things.

We humans are a part of this wonderful cycle of life, with the opportunity to create our own beauty, whether it be in the arts, or through our work, or simply in a life well-lived. As a tree is beautiful by simply being a tree, so we are called by the Author of life to live authentically,  reflecting in our own way the beauty of God’s creation.

“The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”  (St. Irenaeus)