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I hope you've had a good week. To everything there is a season... Autumn is well and truly here and the leaves are turning a beautiful orange. For me, autumn often brings to the fore many realities of life. change. transition. gloom. beauty. It gets cooler, darker earlier, there are longer nights, fallen leaves and bare trees. It can feel quite depressing. Yet, as the saying goes, without autumn, there would be no spring or summer. Perhaps autumn is a reminder of how to acknowledge our darker and more painful experiences and work towards embracing and accepting change and growth - hopeful that better days are ahead. I was thinking about this as I wondered through the St Kilda Botanical Gardens this week. I came across some thoughts by Anna LeMind, she writes: "...Trees lose their leaves, and it is both sad and beautiful, painful and necessary, morbid and inevitable. Every autumn, nature goes through this melancholic transition and says goodbye to the cheerful summer version of itself. Yet, it lets it go without regrets and welcomes the change. This is an important life lesson for us to remember. If we don’t let things go and dwell on the past, our personal growth stops and we eventually find ourselves stuck in life. ...The autumn season also gives us a chance to appreciate the little things in life. A cup of hot aromatic tea, a warm blanket, a good book – these simple things can make us truly happy after being outdoors in the autumn cold. With the chilly weather and depressing images autumn brings to us, you realize the great power the little joys of life have." So, as the leaves crunch beneath our feet and swirl in the wind, we hope for a positive and uplifting autumn season, in which we embrace personal and universal seasonal change, relish the beauty of the tree colours, appreciate the small things and always look towards brighter and warmer days. Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom, a healthy week ahead.
Rabbi Shmuel
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