SENTIENT TIMES October/November 2002

The Yearly Round

By Richard Moeschl

With the arrival of October, the Autumn season plays out its final moments. The season ends when the month does. The late night hours of Halloween revelry on Oct. 31 and the early morning calm of All Saints Day on Nov. 1 usher in the Winter, the season of Death.

But in the yearly round, this is a death that transitions. An ending that also begins. It is the necessary prerequisite so the old can either make room for the new or to transform into it. This is not a question of one condition being better and supplanting the other. In a deeper understanding of the yearly round, the implication is that the one is the other, only in a different state of being. A wise elder earns the right to that title only after first living as an inexperienced youth. The gradual accumulation of experiences over many years and gaining insight and extrapolating life lessons from those experiences, characterize the process of growing older. That is the task the calendar sets before us when the leaves have long since left the trees.

It is an inner process, this business of growing older. There is a dignity in the name “elder” that eschews physical frailty in favor of interior spiritual strength and power. It is a regal gesture that greets us at the end of Autumn and the gates of death. We will hand over the crown at the end of Winter—at the end of our earthly reign—and the world will justifiably shout, “The king is dead. Long live the king—the queen is dead. Long live the queen.”

If Summer is “wake up and smell the coffee,” Autumn is “wake up and smell the forest fires”—figuratively and literally. This is an apt metaphor for Autumn, for a tiny spark can indeed start a raging conflagration. Fire has been humanity’s companion for eons. It gives light and warmth to both our bodies and souls. It cooks our food and keeps danger away. We celebrate with it from cross-quarter day bonfires to Jack O’ Lanterns, Hanukkah and birthday candles. And fire changes that which it touches. We use it to melt iron and copper to make steel and bronze. And we use it to consume our bodies when we die.

The smell of burning leaves in the Autumn, so different from the smell of burning logs in wintertime, combines with the crisp air and rapidly dropping temperature to activate the senses and the soul. We are on alert. The wake-up call has sounded. Fire is at work.

Autumn wants to wake us to get us ready for something different. Something, quite possibly completely different from what we are experiencing now. This was the experience of the companions of young Siddhartha. When their friend sat down under the Bodhi tree and vowed he would not stir from that place until he received the wisdom to understand human suffering, something happened to him. Something so profound that his friends asked him who or what he had become and what they should call him. The enlightened Siddhartha replied very simply and honestly—“I am awake.” That is what the word Buddha means and it became his name.

“I am awake” is what Autumn wishes for us all. But being awake is not just the opposite of being asleep. It is an activity unto itself. In saying, “I am awake,” we are not saying, “I have woken up.” By speaking in the present tense, as Buddha did, we are intimating that being awake is something we are and not something we do. Autumn demands that we be so alive that it kills us—and makes us new.

What the fires of Autumn wish to forge is a precious alchemical alloy made from the two seemingly disparate ores of matter and spirit. What Autumn looks forward to is the winter of our reconciliation—not our discontent. A time when our summer scientist and springtime visionary can lie down together like the lion and the lamb because they are one.

Autumn wants us to be on fire. To explore—not to decide. To inquire—not to answer. To dialogue—not debate. We need the skills gained from these transformative experiences if we are to continue the process of our becoming. Then, when Thanksgiving comes around on the heels of the harvest, we can be truly grateful that we have stored away sustenance for the lean times of Winter that lie ahead.

Richard Moeschl is an Ashland, Oregon writer, educator and public lecturer on ancient and contemporary astronomy, the calendar, and the origin of seasonal festivals. He’s the author of Exploring the Sky: Projects for Beginning Astronomers and serves as founder and executive director of the nonprofit Horizon Institute, which provides opportunities for exploring scientific and spiritual perspectives.

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