Counting on Cycles

During the night someone spread a beautiful carpet of golden leaves and yellowed pine needles over the path I walk each morning. The usually hard path turned overnight into a soft and supple path so that walking felt different. The trees have been holding on to their leaves, but they are fast falling and snow on the mountains tells me the world is changing. But I’ve lived long enough to know that this season of dying vegetation is temporary. Spring with its new life will come. Summer in all its bright glory will follow. And then there will be another fall. I’ve also learned that you can’t have a tomato plant without burying a seed, but death of that seed means new life will grow up with new fruit and in that fruit will be new seeds that can be buried and grow new plants. 

We all know this and accept it, but what we sometimes don’t recognize is that the changing times in our lives, the down times of disappointment or trial also are cyclical in nature. The down times will pass and change will bring new opportunities or knowledge or skills that wouldn’t have been possible without those down times.

The important thing to remember in the midst of the coldest winter is that seasons have cycles which means summer will surely come.

Picture = "Path at Wason Pond" by Sean Connoly