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As I write, the sun has emerged from the clouds for the first time in 6 days—Autumn came in with prolonged, dark, rainy, and chilly emphasis this year. It is clearly no longer summer! There are many ways to celebrate this equinox period (halfway between the solstices), one of which begins Friday evening with the Jewish festival of Sukkot, in which temporary hut-like structures are built. Families eat and sometimes even sleep in them to remind us that life is temporary and fragile, and to help us live into the gratitude for the shelter we have. The roofs of these huts (meant to resemble the tabernacles erected by the Hebrew people during the much-told stories of forty years wandering in the desert) are purposely porous—you have to be able to see the stars through them, so let's hope for better weather during the 8 days of the harvest festival.
We'll have our own harvest festival with the Fall Fiesta on Saturday (get your tickets and come be with us!). I missed last year because of Covid, but I remember so fondly the year before, gazing out at the trees beginning to turn in color, with the leaves blowing around along the ground. Truly, the leaves take me back to so many memories of years past, so this week, I share a poem written by Professor of English Emeritus from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Lloyd Schwartz about...leaves!
Leaves
Lloyd Schwartz
Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony
isn't lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—
the trees don’t die, they just pretend,
go out in style, and return in style: a new style.
Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far
enough away from home to see not just trees
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks
like rain, or snow, but it’s probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder,
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the
most color last year, but it doesn't matter since
you’re probably too late anyway, or too early—
whichever road you take will be the wrong one
and you’ve probably come all this way for nothing.
You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You
Can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop.
It’s what you've come for. It’s what you’ll
come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll
remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt
or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last.
What strikes you about the poem? Do images from autumns gone past come to mind? Or do you take a metaphorical approach to understanding the poem's meaning?
Have you ever experienced something that you simultaneously wanted to stop and to last?
Does the shortness or evanescence of an event make it more memorable, more able to stay in your mind?
Do you see connections between the falling leaves and the ideas underlying the festival of Sukkot?
Certainly, we at UUCMC want to be a place of love and support, of comfort and shelter, a place where we are both challenged and consoled. And yet, so many people do not have reliable sanctuary, where they can live authentically as who they are. The recent wave of proposed legislation denying transgender persons access to healthcare, sports, even bathrooms, along with book bannings meant to erase, or make difficult access to, trans and other LGBTQ+ lives suggest that congregations such as ours can be vital places of flourishing for marginalized populations. This Sunday, in honor of LGBTQ+ History month, we will have a special collection for Make It Better for Youth, a Monmouth C0unty organization that increases opportunities for youth in our county and surrounding areas.
I hope you will join us Sunday for the first service in a month when our congregational theme will be Heritage. Let's begin the month by vowing to have our UUCMC heritage to be one of love, together.
See you Sunday, and see you tomorrow afternoon for Tea Time, where we check in with one another and discuss Lloyd Schwartz's poem.
Rev. Craig
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