September 20, 2020 - Fall From Grace

I cannot think of a better way to herald the Fall season than to make an apple pie.  Blueberries are Maine’s number one crop, but potatoes and apples are right behind them—both good keepers for storage and nourishment throughout the winter months.  I will be making pies as well as dehydrating hundreds of apple slices to bring along with me on my winter jaunts through the woods.

It is like bringing a little bit of stored summer along.  A dried slice of apple plumps up in the mouth and delivers sweet sunshine every time.  It laughs in the face of even the coldest and snowiest days, saying, “Catch me if you can!”

And so we plunge into Fall.  But exactly what it is we are falling from, I am hard pressed to figure out.  Are we falling from the pinnacle of sweltering summer days?  Then I welcome the calm and quiet coolness.  Are we falling from growth?  Then I glow with pride at the fruition.  Are we falling from days of ease and slumber?  (And surely summer is anything but that if you live in the country.)  Then I welcome the silence and sleep of the coming winter.

Perhaps we are falling from grace, from a time when the Earth trusted us to make good use of the growing season.  And if we did not do so, then perhaps we are falling into chagrin.  Or perhaps a fall from grace is a fall from the endowment of life to the gift of death.  Perhaps we fall from the land of the living into the land of the spirit.  Again.

“Catch me if you can!” the innocent child says and laughs as she runs in the summer sunshine in a field full of flowers.  And, indeed, she shall be caught and pressed into the grueling servitude of life until she falls wearily and gratefully from grace and beauty into peace and plenty and quiet.  Come, you Angels of Transfiguration, receive her into your arms and use the fruit of her labor in your work of renewal.  All of life has its exact price—and death an incalculable reward, worth a King’s ransom.