Autumn Acorns

an invitation to letting go...

photo by Alexander Klarmann

I live under tall oak trees which produced a bumper crop of acorns this year. All night long they fall upon the roof as I sleep. On a windy night, the noise is thunderous.

This letting go of the acorns by the tall oaks makes me imagine what is must be like to live under the skies of Gaza or Ukraine or the many other places around the world where hatred, violence, and destruction are released in a bumper crop of drones and bombs. On a restless night, I wonder about these intimate strangers — intimate because they are humans like me; strange because they are so far away in distant lands. Yet, I feel powerless in dong anything for my sisters and brothers in the war-torn corners of the world. And, for me, this powerlessness so easily leads to indifference which is never the answer to the face of evil. “… and in what I have failed to do” we pray.

So, what are these falling acorns and falling bombs saying to me? I believe that conflicts of all sort begin in the human heart. Perhaps these wars that I can do nothing about are an invitation to explore my own heart for where violence and hatred may be hiding in the form of resentments, grudges, jealousies, prejudices, gossip. What violence am I releasing into the world that needs to stop? I want to spend some time this month snooping around the dark corners of my heart with brutal honesty. Perhaps this can be my offering to those intimate strangers around the world who suffer.

Yes, Autumn is a season of releasing, of letting-go when the trees release their vibrant leaves, acorns, and seeds to the wild October winds. It is this process of releasing to a time of dormancy that allow the trees to live on by creating space that invites the sprouting of new buds in the spring. It is a time of vulnerability as the trees eventually stand as naked silhouettes against a winter sky. If only I could let go with such abandon! If only I could more frequently embrace vulnerability!

All I can do is look to the trees with their falling leaves and acorns and ask myself what needs to be released from my own life. What beliefs or stories am I carrying that no longer align with who I am? What commitments need to be renegotiated or released entirely? What commitments need to be strengthened and reinvigorated? What grief needs to be named and allowed to flow? What toxic relationships need to be addressed? What dreams are naive? What fears are paralyzing? What needs to lie fallow? Letting go heals and creates room for something new.

This month, I hope to allow these trees to teach me how to release whatever violence may exist in my heart, to reveal and release what no longer serves, and to make the space to welcome new attitudes, new ways of seeing, new directions. In doing so, perhaps these autumn acorns can teach me to more readily surrender to the divine flow that seeks always to orient and animate my life.

Blessings on the journey,

Joanne