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December 31, 2005
And the Seasons, They Go 'Round and 'Round And the seasons they go ‘round and ‘round So Joni Mitchell wrote in her sadly poignant tribute to time and change and growing up, “Circle Game,”one of the songs on my favorite song list. Yes, once again the earth has made its way around the sun, and here we are again, at the end of one revolution, and at the beginning of another. Time, change, movement – all three are part and parcel of the other. The earth whirls around the sun marking the years. The earth spins around on its axis, marking the days, and the tides. The moon revolves around the earth, marking historically, in its synodic revolution, that unit of time from which mankind developed the month. And to top it all off, just to add richness and diversity to life on this great planet, this earth’s axis of rotation is tilted with respect to its plane of revolution, giving us in temperate regions the beautiful richness of the seasons of the year! As it turns out, for us, the date in our calendar for the New Year is at the beginning of the season of winter, after the winter’s solstice, and after the days are getting longer again. It is a time of hope, looking ahead to Spring, and warmth. O how I love this great world God has made! Time, change, movement – all at work, all the time, giving us past and future, history and hope. For a melancholy personality like me, change can be quite painful. Every joy is fleeting. Every delight fades. I know that another joy is around the corner, but it takes me a while to let go of the one just past, the one that is gone. I have felt this every autumn of my life as the leaves change and fall, and now every other autumn as yet another child goes off to college. I remember sitting there in my office chair looking out the window, leaning back in the chair so that one window pane neatly framed one tree, one visually noisy maple tree across the parking lot. Thankfully, due to my angle of view, I could see neither the parking lot nor the cars below. It was as if they were not even there. The morning sun shining from behind me spotlighted the tree. For a blessed moment, that tree was my entire world. I thought to myself, “By what grace do I get to sit here and fill my sight with all these shades of orange?” I don’t know the names for the different ways orange can look. But the effect of all the almost-red to almost-yellow colors, mixed up and curled around together in patterns no one would have thought of—the effect was pure joy for me. Season after season, revolution after revolution, the beauty comes around again, the beauty and wonder of each spring, each summer, each autumn, and each winter. By what love do I get to feel such fullness? But why do joy and sadness feel so much alike? I had a dream one night, a dream of a lost loved one. In the dream I wept and moaned with sadness. Then I awoke.
The joy I felt looking out upon that tree was not unlike the sadness I felt in the dream. Every few seconds, a leaf falls almost straight down in the still air. In the petiole of the leaf, right where it joins the stem, the cells commit suicide, and the leaf breaks off. One falls, then another, then another, and then they're all gone. No more orange. No more blast of morning color to greet me as I open my office door and settle into my chair. That beauty like all beauty did not, does not, last. Stop falling leaves! Don’t go away, swathes of orange! Don’t grow up, children! Don’t move away, friend! Don’t die, Mom! Don’t be swept away, child! Oh that we could freeze-frame the good moments! It is no wonder joy and sadness go together.
Once, when I was younger, I had no place to hang my happiness, no place to beam my joy, no place to pour my sadness. I was alone in the universe. We were all alone in the universe. And then I knew I wasn’t alone after all. There was One who brooded over this bent world. Before, I didn’t know what to do with all the joys that rose up within me. Maybe if I studied and dissected and taxonomized them my joy would be complete. Then I learned simply to say, “Thank you.” It made all the difference. I sat beside the creek and read Romans 8:18-27 over and over, that passage which speaks of the “longing” or “moaning” of creation, and of the renewal of the earth which is to come when Jesus returns. I wept, and laughed, and finally knew that all the sadness and joy would find fulfillment one day. Soon all would be right, and creation would no longer groan, nor would I groan with it and have dreams of sadness. No more would people be swept away by waves; no more would there be wars; no more would there be pain and death. No more by its rhythms and changes and fading beauties would creation stir up longings for wholeness and completeness and permanency. But for now I am glad those longings are stirred. Does the longing of creation in fact mirror our own longings, its groaning our groaning? I know when I sit by a tree in the New Earth I will have only joy. But will the New Earth still travel around the sun? Will the New Earth be tilted on its axis? Will there not still be seasons, and fadings, and leafings, and disappearings? It’s hard to imagine richness of life without changes. But it’s hard for me to imagine changes without sorrows. Is it possible that, then, the fleeting color of the tree, which to us signals shorter days and a kind of dying, will no longer cause a pang of emptiness along with a wellspring of joy? In the course of this life, with the changes that time brings, it’s hard to imagine feeling the pleasure without the pang. Yet I can’t imagine that such pangs will be allowed, or will be possible, in the New Earth and New Heaven. Will the Lord’s light, by which it says we shall see, somehow bend and change, grow and fade, to make seasons? I hope so. Will diversity and richness end? I think not. As to how it will work, as to how there will be changing and diversity and leafing and unleafing I do not know. But I look forward to seeing. Somehow, however it works, all will be good and whole and full and complete. There will be no more groaning of creation. There will be no more sadness in dreams. There will be no more tsunamis and earthquakes and wars. There will be no more tears. Joy without sadness. Joy unmixed. It awaits. And the seasons, they go ‘round and 'round… Thanks Joni Mitchell for the song… Joel Gillespie |
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