As Pete Seeger, quoting Qoheleth (or Ecclesiastes) so melodically tells us, there is a season for everything under heaven.  Life, seasons, emotions — all fit into this packed image. Driving down the highway in mid-September, I saw a patch of sunflowers in the midst of all the wheat fields that cover the Prairies in the fall. It was so startling in its vibrancy and colour, yet also very thought provoking for one who is in a life transition of sorts. 

For the past few months, I’ve been in a sort of melancholy which I simply was unable to understand. But with the image of the harvest, something was tweaked. This past weekend I harvested my vegetable garden, and it yielded abundantly! But it’s hard work to harvest. There’s so much involved — picking, cleaning, composting, freezing, canning – that what starts out to be the most pleasant of jobs ends up being somewhat tedious (well, never-endingly tedious, it seems, if the piles of produce awaiting my attention is any indication).

It’s also hard work to make any of life’s transitions: childhood to adolescence; to young adulthood; to adulthood, etc; from single to married; from single to celibate; from partnered to alone; from employed to unemployed; and so on. Transitions aren’t easy. They can be disconcerting, scary, and demand faith. They’re like Danaan Parry’s Parable of the Trapeze (which you can listen to on YouTube, and I suggest you do).

Like the transformation from seed to maturity, I attribute the blues I was feeling as the movement into a different stage of maturity. I’m getting to the point in my life where I feel like people respect me for my age and experience of life, and that has evoked conflicted emotions. I want to be respected for my knowledge and abilities, my Ignatian goal to be a woman for others, witness and compassion, not just my age!

But those attributes are not mutually exclusive. Like the harvest, I have come to realize that God blesses us in each season of our lives. It’s really up to each of us to open our hearts to that blessing, and to act out of it. As Danaan Parry says, transition is the only place that real change occurs.

So let the transformation, the harvest, the reverence for all of life continue!