Accepting change

What autumn teaches us about being human

Photo by Sander Weeteling on Unsplash

As children of Ohio’s Appalachian foothills, autumn was one of my greatest joys. My brother and I soared into the piles of fallen brown leaves. The crunchy cushion softening our falls. We’d jump up, laughing, “Again, again, again.” The satisfying crackle of metal moving the decomposing leaves into a mound filled our autumn days.

Kids can find the joys in most anything.

As an adult I sometimes am annoyed by seasonal shifts. Sometimes I might look forward to sweater-weather, or spring blossoms, but looking forward comes with a dash of malaise. Time’s passage means we have less of it. To look forward to a year’s end, as I have felt throughout 2022, means I am wishing away precious time.

And yet, I cannot help but always look forward to a new year.

Today is the Jewish New Year. A holiday that asks practicing jews to throw away whatever has not served us. The holiday comes at a new moon, and is aligned with the autumnal equinox too—a powerful celestial moment, if you are open to that sort of woo woo thing.

Jewish holidays might look like celebrations, but really they are an excuse to dive into our suffering. I grew up suffering through boring synagogue services that went on and on about how our people had suffered for generations. Later at my Grandma’s house we smiled and joked as we ate kugel (a sweet noodle casserole), matzo ball soup, brisket, wine so sweet it hurt the teeth, and apples dipped in honey, but we were also watching our elders grow more frail. These gatherings were our elders’ way of reminding us to keep our cultural traditions alive throughout our generation’s changes. But then my grandmother died, and we all stopped gathering.

As a mom, I had to figure out how to celebrate this holiday. I tried synagogue, but didn’t feel right forcing the boys to sit through something I didn’t like either. So instead I started cooking. I learned from family and friends how to make my own holiday meals—green bean salad from my CSA box, pomegranate chicken from a local farm, potato kugel. Over the years, we hosted gatherings with different friends and extended family. Then during Covid, it was just our little family alone in the dining room. Now, we’re back to gathering, but time and ailments make it harder for our entire clan to share a table. Change, it appears, is the only constant.

This week’s action

Jews around the world are reckoning with change today. Some go to bodies of water to throw bread as a symbol of what doesn’t serve them. Others gather to sing and pray. I sit here looking out my window at the community garden I planted thinking about all the changes I’ve encountered this year. The losses, the fears, the celebrations, the shifts in focus. Like my garden, now drooping under the weight of the late summer heat, I am in need of a seasonal shift. Maybe we all are.

I would like to urge you all to go to the water this week—a pond or lake or the sea—take some stale bread and throw away what doesn’t serve you anymore. Toss away your anxiety and terror so you can open to the tide of change that my dear friend, Carole Walsh, a brilliant and important thinker, civic leader and permaculture specialist, says is rising, and sweeping clear resistance to the true work that needs to be done for the planet, and ourselves.

We cannot do the civic and environmental (or emotional) work we need to do if we are too filled with unnecessary excess emotion. Or if we are clinging too hard to what was. Sure I long for my youth, when no more leaves remained on the trees, and our sneakers were replaced with snow boots; the days when my brother and I bundled up to sled, the dogs chasing us down the hill, barking if we got to close to the not-quite-completely frozen lake. Our faces reddened by cold wind, our smiles so brash, almost a challenge to the winter that it would not usurp our fun.

But that’s not my reality anymore. This summer I have been confronted with too-many changes and challenges beyond my control—Covid, death, stress, the unimaginable. When the worst of this summer came to head, I was walking with a wise woman who said when the dark thoughts arise, she meets them, acknowledges them, thanks them for being there, then she takes a deep breath and sends them away.

What if we do this with what doesn’t serve us anymore? What if we do this with what holds us back from living lives we feel proud of? Some days I think about little Michele and Brett living their best lives on an isolated peninsula in southeastern Ohio. The seasons forced us to adapt, but they also taught us how little we controlled and how much nature changed in an instant. We could dress warmer, or pile more leaves into the mound, but we couldn’t stop the snow from falling, or the buds from blooming. We can’t stop the changes, so what if we learn to embrace them?

~Michele