Ministry Appropriating Issues on Responses to Life and Vocations

AUTUMN PRAYER OF ACCEPTANCE

One of the blessings of living in countries like United States with four seasons in a year is the privilege of being able to transition to the different seasons and thus to appreciate each season better.  However, I have friends who hated the cold seasons of October and November and who move to or wish to be rather in warmer tropical areas where the trees are evergreen and routinely alternate dry and wet year after year.  As the autumn season progressively transforms our world in preparation for the winter time, I am reminded of those friends of mine who find it hard to experience all these autumnal changes in lives and in the lives of those who are around them.  As the trees are gradually being stripped bare, and the gray and brown dead leaves cover the fields, the mountains and the hills, I become more keenly aware of the gnawing sadness, the unknown fear and all the possible discomforts that maybe slowly overtaking them.  I ask you to join me if you know anybody who may be in the same predicaments.  Let us hold them close as our days get shorter and the nights get colder and longer each day.  As we embrace them, let us also be aware of where we are now in our inner horizons, that is, in our inner seasons of life.  Are we there yet? Where are we as these autumnal transformations are happening right before your eyes? 

Let us all pause and immerse ourselves then into this profound meditation written by our spiritual friend and companion inviting us to look at the wisdom and inspiration of the autumn season.  
Let us be reminded of how God continually invites us to be open to experience these necessary spiritual transformations in our lives in our spiritual journeys.   

Autumn God, earth teaches me 

by her natural turning from one season to another. 

As she enters into the dying and rising cycle, 

she welcomes the changes.   

May I be open to the teaching in this season of autumn 

and turn, as autumn does, 

towards opportunities for my spiritual transformation.

When I accept only the beautiful and reject the tattered, 

torn pieces of who I am, 

when I treat things that are falling apart as my enemies, 

walk me among the dying leaves.   

Let them tell me about their power to re-energize the earth's soil 

by their decomposition and decay.

When I fear the loss of youthfulness and the reality of my aging,
 turn my face to the brilliant color of October trees. 

Open my spirit to the mellow resonance of the autumn sunsets.
 Brush your love past my heart with the beauty of the golden leaves twirling from the autumn trees.

When I refuse to wait with the mystery of the unknown 

and when I struggle to control rather than to let life evolve, 

wrap me in the darkening days of November. 

Encourage me to enter into stillness and silent mystery, 

to wait patiently for clarity and wisdom.

When I grow tired of using my gifts to benefit others, 

take me to the autumned fields 

where earth freely yields the bounty of her summer. 

Let me become aware of how she allows her hands to be stripped clean so her fruitfulness will be a source of nourishment.

When I resist efforts to warm a relationship 

that has grown stale by my chilly indifference or resistance, 

 me feel the first hard freeze of autumn breath 

and the death that this coldness brings to greening things.

When I neglect to take care of myself and become 

totally absorbed in life activities, 

let me see how animals gather sustenance 

and provide for the winter. 

Take me inside the caves of those who hibernate 

and remind me of my contemplative nature.

When I fight unwanted and unsought changes 

and when I seek to keep thing just as they are, 

 me in the wings of birds flying south for another season.  

Gather their spirit of freedom into my heart. 

Let me be willing to leave my well satisfied place of comfort 

for the discomfort of a  long flight into the unknown.

Thank you, God of Transformation, 

for all these lessons that the autumn earth teaches me.

Sister Joyce Rupp

COROLLARY PRAYER

WAKEN IN ME A SENSE OF JOY

O extravagant God, this ripening, red-tinged autumn,
waken in me a sense of joy in just being alive.

Joy for nothing in general except everything in particular;
joy in sun and rain mating with earth to birth a harvest;
joy in soft lift through the shyly disrobing trees;
joy in acolyte moon setting halos around processing clouds;
joy in the beating of a thousand wings
mysteriously knowing which way is warm;
joy in wagging tails and kids' smiles
and in this spunky old city;
joy in the taste of bread and wine, 
the smell of dawn, a touch, a song, a presence;
joy in having what people cannot live without - 
other people to hold and to cry and laugh with;
joy in love, in you and that all at first and last is grace.

Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace, 136.