Celebrating and Mourning Life's Changing Seasons

A few summers ago, I scribbled down on a post-it note, “I need a liturgy for the changing of the seasons.” It was May or maybe June. My kids were wrapping up their school year as I juggled a series of work trips. We were about to dive into a dizzying 10-week schedule of summer camps and family plans, and everything seemed to be moving way too fast. 

The note sat on my laptop keyboard for at least three months—a full season—before I could give the idea more of my attention. Unsurprisingly, as my family and I settled into autumn, the pace of life didn’t slow. With a bit of reflection (prompted by my post-it), I came to realize a simple truth: as long as I have the blessing of kids at home, life will be busy. If our family wanted to avoid being steered by our schedules and to-do lists, it was up to us to create rhythms of pause to notice and celebrate the growth and change happening in and around us. Many of the activities and commitments filling our calendars weren’t going to last forever and often brought our family moments of joy and connection. While busyness was the byproduct of a blessing, my deep desire was to be less frustrated by this external reality and more intentional about paying attention in the midst of it all.
     

Since then, a personal exploration into Celtic spirituality has given me resources to start living into the inward pace and rhythms I want to have, rather than being steered by all that’s happening around me. The Celtic calendar intertwines with the year’s constantly changing seasons, forming a perpetual reminder to pause and notice the sacred balance of dark and light, old and new, and decay and growth happening all around us. Its year begins in November, marking the end of harvest and the slow transition from lighter days into darker ones; Esther DeWaal, in The Celtic Way of Prayer, calls it “the thinnest time of the year, the season at which the veil between time and eternity can easily become transparent, the time when darkness overtakes the light.” 

In this ordering of the year, there is an essential understanding that, even as we honor the bounty our hard work and creative efforts bring, in the same measure, we recognize the sense of loss for what must be left behind as seasons change. And this awareness brought my thoughts back to the note I’d written to myself months before. I realized that what I truly longed for was permission for us to pause, let time stand still for just a moment, and notice both the bounty each passing season of life had brought to us before looking ahead to the next. For my family, that “liturgy” finally came in the form of a new tradition. One Sunday night in November, we lit candles around our house, made a big pot of apple cider, cooked our favorite meal, and invited another family over to celebrate with us. After dinner, we gathered around our backyard firepit for probably the last time that year to share stories, laugh together, and mark the changing of the seasons—our own little feast day.

Since then, we’ve developed a rhythm of pausing to look back and forward at other critical moments throughout the year—such as the coming of spring, birthdays, family vacations, and the end of each academic year. When we’re attentive, we find there are so many opportunities for us to practice intentional moments of connection so that we can both celebrate the good things a new season brings and mourn the hardships and losses that come with growing older. I feel a sacredness in the rhythm of it all that stabilizes me somewhere between these two poles.

The depth of reflection that always emerges when my husband and I reflect with our kids in these moments prompts me to wonder how my directees may, too, feel the longings that come with the transitional times of the year. As spiritual companions, by noticing and anticipating the changing of seasons both in the world around us and in the rhythms of daily life, we can help those we direct to put voice and shape to an inner desire to pause and take notice. In doing so, we can help those we journey with find a sacred rhythm all their own to celebrate and mourn life’s ever-changing seasons.