Fall Wistfulness, Advent and Old Photographs
This is the first fall where my year seems to be ending. As a student, fall was always new — and hectic — but now I am living in a rhythm closer to the calendar year. I live with the seasons of the church which actually ends with the end of fall. I am finally feeling the wind down in harmony with nature.
As a preacher, I tend to speak against things like nostalgia and sentimentalism. In the Church, where meaning and symbolism are of utmost importance, nostalgia is usually a misdirected desire for the goodness of the past. I prefer words like Tradition and History which are as much about the future as they are the past.
Yet, there is something about fall, and particularly Thanksgiving, that draws you into these feelings and emotions. Fall itself is a death of summer so to speak. Nature seems old and dying. It is easily to slip into longing for the days of summer gone by. Winter is death itself, and it also brings a certain newness as sometimes we need death in our lives to move on.
It was nice to laugh with family this weekend (and get a good night sleep finally). When it was all over, I immediately wanted it not to be. This is the root of nostalgia, longing for the past. And maybe some days this isn’t so bad.
But when it keeps us from moving on, the leaves stay orange and yellow all the time. The world feels old and dying year round. I am excited for Advent this year. It is going to feel like something new, really new, maybe for the first time ever.
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The photo is actually new. From a photo shoot, of which one photo will make it into Canada Lutheran.
