A time for everything....

Autumn is nipping the air, it's crisp and sharp.  It arrived this morning in grand fashion! There is change in the air.  The world is undergoing a powerful transformation.  The nights are getting longer, dinner is barely over when the sun has decided to tuck itself in for the night.  The sun is taking a bit longer to wake each morning. This is my favorite time of year. 

Maybe I don't think right... who knows, if you are reading this and have even the slightest thought that I do, then you are probably just as off as I am.  I love Autumn. It is by far my favorite of the seasons.  Summer is brutally hot, I don't do well with heat and humidity.  Winter, while it has beautiful moments that I love, is a bully that doesn't know when it's time to go away.  Spring is a close second, if it weren't so fragile and brief.  It expends all it's energy to push winter away and is left frail and fleeting. 

But Autumn is so wondrous.  It slowly escorts summer out, like a gentleman, not exactly pushy just firm. By early September you are sure to see those first few leaves starting to drop.  That gentle announcement that it's on its way.  The gradual lengthening of the night... wasn't it lighter last week at this time?

For me it's an energizing time.  Kids are back at school. September has always been like my January.  It's the time for changes, plans, celebration, joy.  I am like a little kid when the leaves start to fly, my energy soars. I will laugh with delight at the beautiful patchwork of the hills, inspired to create.  I will kick up leaves and sip coffee by a fire waiting for sunrise to sneak in. It's a time to bake apple pies, make caramel apples and applesauce.  Check up on your stockpiles and canning to insure the sweet tastes of summer continues all year.  A time to harvest the last of your garden putting up what you can.  Break out the jeans and sweatshirts!

Autumn is my favorite!  I love the changes it brings.

This year it feels like it is ushering in far greater changes.  This year it feels like there is a difference in our world.  I am an optimist, I am pretty darn positive, but this year I am fearful.  I am seeing more ugly in the world.  It feels planned and orchestrated.  It feels like evil is trying to win.

Each day you see more senseless violence.  Chicago is now the murder capital of the world. By car that is six hours away.  Too darn close for my likings. But then St. L isn't much better, you can barely pick up a paper and not read of another senseless shooting.

Every time there is violence there is another call to ban guns.  It makes me ill.  We need to address the reason, not the result.  Chicago is a gun free zone.... I am fairly sure they aren't choking each other to death up there.

There is a horrid sense of entitlement, that is the root of it, in my opinion.  People are constantly wanting something that isn't theirs or money they didn't earn.  They have the gimme's... Somewhere, somehow we lost touch with the golden rule.  Somehow respect and love for our fellow man vanished. We used to take care of others, family or not, now we wait for some nameless, faceless bureaucracy to do it. At some point in the long hot summer we simply stopped caring. Oh not everyone, but I am frightened that too many have.

Yesterday I heard a woman speaking to her elderly mother at Walmart (go figure...) Mom was on a motorized cart and looked so tired, like it was everything she had in her to be there.  That woman was snapping and barking at her mother, simply because she had let her hand slip from the power button and come to an abrupt stop.  That mom, looked devastated, close to tears and embarrassed that her daughter would speak to her like that.  I felt that way for her. 

If we can treat our parents and family like that, what is going to stop us from treating total strangers like that?  Or worse?

Blame video games, blame guns, drugs or alcohol, blame every inanimate thing you want.  Ultimately, it is us as people that have to face the music, know right from wrong, and do what we need to do.  We are slowly changing as people from bright vibrant autumn colors full of power and beauty into cold, empty remnants of our former selves.  We are not focusing on people, but on things.  We are listening more and more to the darker side of things.  Satan is whispering in too many people's ears. We have forgotten the skills of love, compassion, common sense, caring, respect, honesty and personal responsibility. We are listening to the darkness....

Ecclesiastes 3

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

I worry that our silly world has moved right past it's Autumn.  Failed savor and enjoy it's textures and colors.  That we are rushing headlong into the dreary, drawn out dead of winter.  I wish that everyone would step back, do a serious gut check and refocus on being human beings again.  Flawed but wonderful... not minions of a darker side...