The Mild Melancholy of Autumn

The following is a guest post written by my daughter, Christine Schumacher.

“I feel a loneliness for my Creator that pulls me like a migratory bird in the Fall.” -Rebecca Reynolds.

If fall were a person, she’d be an introverted poet and artist. She steps out of summer shyly, unsure if the world is ready for her. As she paints the leaves red and strips down the trees, and as the carved jack o’ lantern sitting out on the neighbor’s front porch grows mold and curls in on itself, she reminds us there is death, but for those who know, there is more than that.

Through the moments she creates, the cuddling with a lover under a blanket, the communion with family over meals, and the satisfaction of sitting alone with a book while the room fills with the aroma of freshly baked pumpkin bread, she awakens a nostalgia we have kept in the most reserved parts of ourselves. We feel separated from something we have not yet fully known, but we know death is the cause of it, and autumn gently puts her finger on the wound. As she touches us in this way, we ache. We feel that our deepest desires lie in the longing for something more, an intimacy that nothing in the world can ever satisfy.

Well-made poetry and art, the kind we call beautiful or sublime, can show us in small glimpses this light and glorious intimacy for which we long. In her mild melancholy, fall does just that; while she shows us death, she also shows us this light (like any good poet). Since the medium in which fall paints and writes is nature, we can be assured that while she groans with an anguish like our own, under the weight of death, she is pointing us to her Creator and the glory that awaits.

For the ones who know her Creator, let fall remind you through that ache you feel in your bones that we are made for something more. We long for that deep communion and intimacy with Him. We are made for heaven, and let us be assured that one day, we will stand as a bride, and that ache will be replaced with glory, death will be undone, and everything sad will come untrue.

-Christine Schumacher