Autumn and Lent work well together. Cooler and shorter, the days gain an edge, a hint of melancholy magic. We watch trees being stripped of their colour and feel time passing, winter approaching.
Lent also has that ascetic edge. We strip away some of our comfort and prepare for Easter – the pilgrimage from pain and death to elation and resurrection. In the Northern hemisphere you have the advantage of Easter happening in the Spring. Christ rises into the season of new life and you have the promise of summer to come.
We southerners face winter which doesn’t tie into the Easter Sunday celebration nearly as well. But then again we need Easter most when times get tough. The world is currently in the grip of a wintry recession. Poverty is increasing, the global food crisis is deepening, unemployment is rising to flood proportions. All around the world there are nasty little wars, human rights abuses, corrupt governments growing rich while their people struggle to survive. And we have climate change threatening to make it all worse.
It would be easy to despair or try to ignore the suffering world – burying our heads in the quicksand of consumerism. Maybe one purpose of Lent is opening our eyes and hearts to the massive needs and problems in our own societies and internationally. But as we journey into winter we do so with the assurance that the risen Jesus who, fasted 40 days in the wilderness, who defeated death itself, is with us.
I’ll leave you with a short poem I wrote a few years back which seems to fit this autumn lent theme.
The easy season’s over in the summer city –
The hot, heavy days washed away
The last swim taken in a cool, grey sea.
Auckland turns indoors as the nights close in.
The evergreens are waiting,
Their tiredness gone,
Aware of the long wet weeks to come,
The sodden cold and driven rain.
Time to prepare for the darkness ahead,
To open the winter wardrobe,
Gather fuel for the coming storms
A bleak forecast of loss and pain.
May clear, crisp autumn days,
The soft, reflective quiet of the fall,
Provide a well of stillness, source of strength,
To meet whatever Easter brings our way.
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