November Promise
Fall is the season I live for. I love everything about it: the cool crispness of the air, the warm sweaters, and especially the beautiful display of color in the trees. It always makes me a little sad as the weeks go by to see the trees looking barer and barer. I mark my life by the trees in many ways. As each season unfolds, I watch them like a calendar and mark the seasons for our family by them. This part of their cycle, where the branches are mostly empty and the grass is piled high with fallen leaves, has always felt sad to me, like the best was behind us. It makes me more melancholy than it should.
But today my eyes have gone to something different. As I've sat in our dining room, I've been amazed at the light flooding through our windows. Our single tulip tree out front is almost bare now. Gone are the green shadows cast on our walls, or the golden glow that's filled the room through October. I can see the sky clearly now, but for the first time I've noticed the change in the light. It's a calm light--not the warm golden glow of summer. But it's clear and white and bright, and it's filled this space in ways I haven't seen yet in this new house.
Trees always take my thoughts deeper. I think it's a trait that's deeply rooted (no pun intended) in a long line of family members who have loved nature. I get my pensive nature and my love of trees from my dad--maybe it's from him that I've learned to look at them and learn about life. Today as I sat here, flooded by the white light, I wondered what I could learn from my November tree. I've talked a lot about the discipline of staying, about allowing the beautiful opportunities--like October leaves--to be stripped away. What's left often feels bare, mundane, unexciting. But there's more to see than bare branches. When the leaves are allowed to fall, suddenly the sun floods in. A calm, clear, bright light that fills the spaces in new ways and casts a fresh light on the shadows.
The November trees are a promise to me. When one thing is stripped away, it's almost always to allow space for something new, something bright, something that couldn't have found its way in until the way was cleared.
November, as it turns out, is just as beautiful as October.
But today my eyes have gone to something different. As I've sat in our dining room, I've been amazed at the light flooding through our windows. Our single tulip tree out front is almost bare now. Gone are the green shadows cast on our walls, or the golden glow that's filled the room through October. I can see the sky clearly now, but for the first time I've noticed the change in the light. It's a calm light--not the warm golden glow of summer. But it's clear and white and bright, and it's filled this space in ways I haven't seen yet in this new house.
Trees always take my thoughts deeper. I think it's a trait that's deeply rooted (no pun intended) in a long line of family members who have loved nature. I get my pensive nature and my love of trees from my dad--maybe it's from him that I've learned to look at them and learn about life. Today as I sat here, flooded by the white light, I wondered what I could learn from my November tree. I've talked a lot about the discipline of staying, about allowing the beautiful opportunities--like October leaves--to be stripped away. What's left often feels bare, mundane, unexciting. But there's more to see than bare branches. When the leaves are allowed to fall, suddenly the sun floods in. A calm, clear, bright light that fills the spaces in new ways and casts a fresh light on the shadows.
The November trees are a promise to me. When one thing is stripped away, it's almost always to allow space for something new, something bright, something that couldn't have found its way in until the way was cleared.
November, as it turns out, is just as beautiful as October.
