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Health & Fitness

For Everything and Everyone, A Season

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. We know when the seasons of the year are changing; there are unmistakable clues in our senses. Lately, a slight coolness and dryness in the air suggests the onset of fall in Florida. The sun has been moving south for many weeks now, splashing in where it hasn’t all summer. Some of our summer gardens are showing the effects of many months of heat. The seasons roll on, unheedful of human things. 

At a deeper level, there are also seasons, seasons of a spiritual kind. If we are in touch with our inner selves, we sense these seasons too. They don’t keep a calendar, though, so we need to watch for them; they can come upon us at any moment. We distinguish a change of spiritual season by its persistence. A whim, which comes in as a tiger and departs as a lamb, is not a change of spiritual season. A spiritual season reaches into the very core of our being. 

After nine years as full-time Floridians (preceded by as many years being snow birds), my partner and I have felt the call to return to our native New England. Yes, we do miss that change of the seasons in New England, which positively assaults the senses. The turning of the leaves is no less than a breathtaking reminder that God reigns in all of God’s glory. The smell of dry fallen leaves is unmatched. Ah, yes, you say, but THE WINTER! Yes, then there’s the winter. Beautiful in its own way. We’re fortunate enough to be settling into a quintessential American home in a small town in the middle of the Green Mountain National Forest. Five feet of snow will fall in our mountains before spring comes. Yet beneath the snow, and through the frigid winter, life is not dead; instead, new life awaits to spring forth. I’m reminded of the Bette Midler song, “The Rose:” 

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Just remember, in the winter

Far beneath the bitter snows,

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Lies the seed that with the sun’s love

In the spring, becomes the rose.

It is, for us, a new season in our lives. A time to say goodbye to friends and churches we have known in Florida, and a time to look forward to meeting new friends and re-uniting with family. It will be a time for us to find new communities of faith in which to serve. I’m looking forward to wearing a sweater for the first time in ten years! In the spring I’m looking forward to publishing my second book. I’m looking forward to enjoying moderate summers, made all the more enjoyable by the cold winters! And the beauty of fall has no equal! Mountains high and gushing rivers. And, in Vermont, I’m looking forward to marrying…really MARRYING…the love of my life!

This will be a time of peace and quietude, and spiritual renewal. It will be a time of service and surprises. It will be a time of contemplation and smallifying life. It will be a time of building strength to continue to speak and work for radical social justice. May you all be blessed!

Rev. John Ransom is an ecumenical pastor, author, and speaker. His website is Emerging Spirit, the internet-based Voices of Justice (www.emergingspirit.info). He can be contacted at revjohnransom@gmail.com.

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