Do yo notice the chill in the air? The briskness in the wind and how it carries this scent of drying leaves and something else…. Around here it’s harvest, grapes are being picked and apples are brought to the local stores by the crate full.
Just like summer brings this scent of BBQ fumes and the blessed assuredness that there is a hotdog and steaming corn available at every back yard get together. So also Autumn has it’s own trademark scent.
This may be my favorite season, maybe I said that about spring and summer too.
But I do I love autumn. The invitation to retract a bit from the busyness of life. It’s such a contemplative time. Where I come from, we’d gather our harvest and set up in the communal kitchen. Big pots and pans, tons of jars, salt, sugar, butcher paper and twine… Everything you needed to can all the fruits and pickle every sort of vegetable.
By choice, I live a much simpler life now. Instead of a field I have a backyard that serves a playground for my children and the dog. I have a few fig trees and successfully grow some peppermint.
But I have not forgotten the other value of autumn, the value of family and food. Of gathering together and sharing a slice of spiced cake with a cup of hot steaming cider. Gathering around a stew that’s overflowing with every kind of orange and red vegetable and breaking the bread together.
Autumn invites us together, this is the season of feasts, the beginning of it. In this country we will soon gather around the Thanksgiving table, but the Thanksgiving season has already begun.
From the beginning of time people have made a big deal about harvest. It is a time when we can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s the time to connect with one another and to honor the Giver of all things good and well. To share all that we have been given.
To give hanks to God that this abundance is beyond what we worked for. It is beyond what we earned. What we sowed multiplied in the earth, we put a morsel in the ground and we harvest a sea of golden wheat.
May we always remember that even though most of us are not farmers, we still have a harvest.
What has this season brought for you? Who are you grateful for? What friendship have you sown into, even just a morsel and are gathering this abundant blessing from? Have you gone over fractions with your child all year and you see that maybe now they are getting it?
Maybe not all your work has returned in as abundantly as you had hoped and prayed for.
This is why we canned in a communal kitchen. This way everyone put in what they had and in the end we all got an equal share.
Community is like this.
If you have a lot or you have a little, you are welcome.
Let us remember that this community economy is the dearest things to God’s heart and a pure expression of his grace.
Be blessed,
Bianca
Bianca Broos 