Out with the old

“Life moves on and so should we”
Spencer Johnson

God is coming! God is coming! All the element we swim in, this existence, Echoes ahead the advent. God is coming! Can’t you feel it?”
Walter Wangerin, Jr.

(remnants of Fall on their way to the compost pile / Julie Cook / 2014)

They were beginning to smell.
They were–
Sunken
Discolored
Half frozen
Smushed
Rotting
Reeking

Several could still be picked up by hand but many had simply turned to mush.
Cold, nearly frozen, mush hiding beneath cracking shells.
Those were scooped up with the old garden spade.

Back in September, they were hopeful.
They were–
bright
colorful
shapely
textural
And they spoke of harvests, waning light and golden days.

For those who were’t paying attention, time, as fickled as she is, has darted forward.
A season is ending and all which claims such as its own, is fading, withering and slowly dying.
Any and all remnants must be sorted out, moved out and eventually thrown out.

A seismic shift is set to take place.
Nature knows this even before we do.
She has set change into motion.
There is much which must take place.
This before the anticipation may truly begin.
Life must first be stripped bare.
All garish excessiveness must be removed.
No distractions are to remain.
Even color must now depart.
For the time of focus is at hand.

So for now all that remains is but the waiting.
For expectancy drifts across the chilling winds.
Watching
Waiting
Hoping
All in anticipation for the season known as Advent.

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; So that, at the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.”
The Book of Common Prayer, published in 1662