Thanksgiving - Lawrence

At this time of year we think about autumn with its glorious colours and falling leaves. Walking through the leaves we smell the scent of autumn and know that the coming of winter will soon be upon us. Many of us think of fall as the best season of the year perhaps because of its beauty and earth’s harvest time. But this may also be the saddest season of the year as falling leaves bring bare trees and signs of death all around us.

Fall brings us harvest festivals and Thanksgiving celebrations. Having planted in spring’s moist earth; watched the seeds’ grow through their first sprouting, budding and flowering in summer’s warmth; rejoiced in their fruiting and harvest as they mature, now we give thanks to the Creator of all this goodness in our harvest services and our family gatherings.

But, for all our rejoicing and celebrating, fall is a sad time of year; with the culmination of the harvest comes also the end of the growing days, the death of the ground plants, the approach of winter’s cold and earth’s apparent death.

People begin to make plans for the coming winter season—they plan to play on the snow-packed ground and the frozen water. Is it a good thing, this denial of nature’s opportunity for rest and renewal? The Creator made our planet with cycles of day and night, summer and winter, life and death. Other animals follow these cycles; some are diurnal, others are nocturnal; some animals hibernate through the winter while others migrate to warmer climes.

We humans defy or deny the cycles of the earth. We do shift-work; we play and work through the winter months; we go on about our business, wrapping ourselves in warm clothing, denying the cold and death of winter and its call to rest.

Perhaps this is not a bad thing. This attitude helps us get through the difficulties in life—times of illness, times of poverty, times of loss. It helps us fight through illnesses and pain; find cures for diseases that were once terminal; we keep smiling, hoping and giving thanks through adverse conditions. It helps us keep on keeping on.

We give thanks not only for the good things—the harvest, our well-being, our blessings—but also the spiritual growth that comes to us through our reliance on God in our difficulties, and the peace that passes all understanding, which comes in times of poverty, illness and loss.

May each reader be blessed in this fall season of paradox; may each be blessed with spiritual growth in whatever are your life’s circumstances.

Judith Lawrence
www. judithlawrence.ca
Author of Glorious Autumn Days: Meditations for the Wisdom Years and Grapes From The Vine, Book of Mystical Poetry. Both available at www.lulu.com
Author of Prayer Companion: A Treasury of Personal Meditation, available at Chapters and www.pathbooks.com

Turning Deadlines into Lifelines

Since publishing my latest book, I seem to have more deadlines than I did when I was writing it. Writing Glorious Autumn Days: Meditations for the Wisdom Years, was the joyful and fun part of the creativity; promoting and selling the book is the work part of the process.

My deadlines include keeping my website up to date. Here I can promote my book and, in order to entice people to visit often, I change various pages to keep it current. Next, I send out review copies of my book to relevant publications and I spend time searching for appropriate magazines and newspapers; my deadline in this instance is to find at least six such publications every couple of weeks. The third deadline I have is to write for this blogspot every few weeks as scheduled, exercising my brain to think of a suitable topic on which to write and making sure that I put it on to the site on time. I also write talks for speaking engagements related to my book.

These are some of my deadlines and, indeed, they could take the life out of me if I let them. However, I prefer to see them as lifelines as they continue to put life into my book. They invite those who read my web pages or reviews to buy my book and read further about God’s love for us and the Divine gift of spiritual life.

Yes, the deadlines are work but they are cause for thanksgiving and, if I see them as such, I can name them lifelines. The word deadline reminds me of the straight line, with its accompanying monotone, on a patient’s bedside monitor that indicates the person’s death. The word lifeline reminds me of the path on which God leads me into spiritual life and light.

At this time of year, I see earth’s creatures all around me meeting their goals, and there is not a hint of death in their activities—all rush toward life. The birds have returned from their winter homes and, in the few short weeks allotted to them, they mate, build nests, lay eggs, hatch and fledge a family, bring them to maturity and prepare them to return to their southern homes. No one makes them do this; they know it has to be done and they do it whole heartedly bringing their lives to fulfillment. For the plants, it is the same thing; they push up from the winter ground as soon as the snow has gone; they bud, blossom, come to fruition and spread their seeds for next year’s cycle of life.

Deadlines suggest anxiety and force; lifelines suggest joy and responsibility. The next time I think of the things I need to get done as deadlines I will make the effort to change their name into lifelines. This will be to my benefit and to God’s glory.