Goodbye, Summer and Hello to Autumn: Lessons from the Blackberries
The morning air has a chill to it even though the afternoon sunshine still kisses me softly and brings a slight sweat to my brow. We pull on the flannel for our morning walk and strip it off quickly when we return to the sunbathed porch.
The sunflowers are withered, the ones that are left. The light has a new quality to it. It’s slightly yellow-filtered and shining from a lower angle through the drying leaves.
Autumn is here now. So the calendar says. I feel it in my skin and in my bones. It’s time to release. To shed skins and drop leaves. To softly wither and begin the decent toward the rest of winter so that come springtime, there’s energy to rise again.
The last of the blackberries are trying to ripen in the last of the summer sun. So in these first days of autumn I reflect on summer and its bounty. I reflect on the blackberries and take what wisdom they have to offer into this sacred season of autumn.
Blackberry picking can be messy work but it is oh so rewarding. Just ask my ten month old with his blackberry covered face. The messy work is especially rewarding in the cold and rainy winter months when a blackberry cobbler calls and the freezer stash provides. Not everything needs to be pretty and easy, and good thing, because the things that matter usually aren’t.
Sometimes we need a new perspective. Sometimes you’re picking and it looks like you’ve gotten all the goodness but then you bend down to find a whole new world of opportunity available. A perspective shift often reveals so much that’s been overlooked. Keep going. There’s more magic to be discovered from a different angle.
You’ve gotta streeeetch to get the good stuff. Not all of the dark juicy berries are within an easy reach. In fact, most of them aren’t. You have to stretch yourself and put yourself out there a little bit if you’re going to collect the full abundance that’s available to you. And also, know your limits. Know how far is too far. Don’t go falling into a thorny blackberry bush to get just one more morsel.
And finally, speaking of thorns… sometimes they’re gonna get ya. We don’t get all of the goodness of life without some thorns here and there. And the thorns might sting. But the sting of pain is only temporary and those thorns serve a purpose. They’re protecting the mother bush so that she can produce the very bounty that you’re after. So try not to curse the thorns too much on your journey and remember that sometimes life gives us a little bit of pain with our pleasure. It’s part of the process.
Thanks you, blackberries for these bits of wisdom and for the comforts of summer that you’ll provide in autumn and beyond as we dip into the freezer stash.
My friend, I hope this shifting season finds your heart open to the changes and to what’s ahead. A snake doesn’t resist shedding her skin. (Or at least I assume she doesn’t?…) May we slip gracefully from our old skins as we watch the trees release their leaves and as we hear the birds singing their new autumn morning songs. For only when we release the old skins can we step into this new phase of life.
It might be messy. There are bound to be thorns. But in spite of the sticky mess and the thorns, keep going and stretch yourself to see it all from a new perspective.