One of the trees in our backyard is like those savvy investors who cash out when everything is trending up, just before the market takes a dive. Weeks ago, while everything was still lush and green, our buckeye turned a deep red. It’s been bare for more than a month.
But all its brethren are catching up. They’ve turned their shades of yellow, red, and orange, and now I’m seeing their awkward limbs poking out everywhere.
Every autumn seems a radical act of faith.
All spring and summer the trees have been hard at work, tirelessly forcing out tiny buds and then growing those buds into leaves. Then those leaves become workhorses of their own, welcoming the sunshine and transforming it into energy-giving glucose. They inhale essential carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, and they release a tree’s excess water across their sun soaked surfaces. A tree’s thousands of leaves allow the tree to eat, breathe, and sweat; they’re indispensable to its survival.
But come fall, the trees cast off every one of those little survival mechanisms. They toss them to the ground.
Does that seem insane to anyone else?
If something is life giving, aren’t we supposed to grip it? If certain processes or practices seem essential, would any of us feel good about letting them drop for even one minute, let alone half the year? I mean, what if the roots get damaged and there’s no fail safe? What if the winter is more brutal than before? What if spring comes and the leaves won’t regrow? Good God! what if the sun stops shining?
Not only does it seem imprudent to simply take it on faith that spring will come again to rev up production, but what about this business of barrenness? Beginning in late fall and then all winter long, the tree stands stripped naked and defenseless against the elements.
Nothing about that sounds pleasant. Except…
I guess that kind of transformation does allow for a reorientation of the tree’s relationship with the world. No longer must it marshal every ounce of its energy toward earning its meals. Nor does it have to provide every other creature’s shade or shelter for a little while. Gone is the constant blowing from all those leaves acting like tiny sails and getting buffeted by every change of the wind. Stripped of all its adornments, the tree is left with only its structure, the thing that undergirds everything.
If something is life giving, aren’t we supposed to grip it? If certain processes or practices seem essential, would any of us feel good about letting them drop for even one minute, let alone half the year? I mean, what if the roots get damaged and there’s no fail safe? What if the winter is more brutal than before? What if spring comes and the leaves won’t regrow? Good God! what if the sun stops shining?
Not only does it seem imprudent to simply take it on faith that spring will come again to rev up production, but what about this business of barrenness? Beginning in late fall and then all winter long, the tree stands stripped naked and defenseless against the elements.
Nothing about that sounds pleasant. Except…
I guess that kind of transformation does allow for a reorientation of the tree’s relationship with the world. No longer must it marshal every ounce of its energy toward earning its meals. Nor does it have to provide every other creature’s shade or shelter for a little while. Gone is the constant blowing from all those leaves acting like tiny sails and getting buffeted by every change of the wind. Stripped of all its adornments, the tree is left with only its structure, the thing that undergirds everything.
I think there’s a word for this practice of letting go… rest.
Rest sounds good, doesn’t it? At least in theory, at least on the surface. Underneath though, the voices in my head tell me that I’m supposed to keep up the momentum or risk stagnation. That I’m supposed to seize on my successes, leveraging them toward greater success. And that every minute I shrink from the spotlight I’m receding toward irrelevance. Stay productive. Stay useful. Stay beautiful. Don’t drop your leaves!
Rest is hard, maybe even harder than work since it requires actual faith.
Faith is throwing away the leftover manna because you trust the promise that more will come in the morning. Faith is letting the leaves fall and embracing the dormancy of winter. Faith is believing that spring will come again. Faith is standing unadorned in the sunshine, stripped of all the thousand intermediaries—the endless efficiency, the ceaseless productivity, the pretty accoutrements—bare and believing that something necessary is happening.
But I also wonder if that cold and barren time is about something more than just looking toward the promise of spring. There may even be good things happening in-between, right there in the waiting. Little graces, sudden surprises like winter snow that falls silently overnight. In the morning after a storm like that I find myself staring at all those barren trees that have been suddenly reborn as if by magic into something majestic. I wonder if they’ve ever been so beautiful, draped in robes of white for no practical purpose that I can see and by absolutely no effort of their own.