“Seasons is a wise metaphor for the movement of life, I think. It suggests that life is neither a battlefield nor a game of chance but something infinitely richer, more promising, more real. The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, or the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages to embrace it all – and to find in all of it opportunities for growth.”

Parker Palmer

In the final essay of Let Your Life Speak: Listening For The Vocation, “There Is A Season,” Parker Palmer uses the metaphor of seasons to describe life’s rhythm. He walks through the significance, poetry, and meaning in each. That makes sense to me. I love the rhythm of changing seasons. I miss the burst of Spring. The waking up of it all. Summer as it shows off. Fall with landscapes of painted leaves. The slumber of Winter and the quiet of snow. I love that, too.

I grew up living with the real, tangible, wondrous, temperature-dictated transitions. Seasons make sense to me at a cellular level. I always knew, growing up, that in a few months things would change. I would get to swim in swimming pools, jump in leaves, and wear coats. That made whatever was happening feel like life’s normal ebb and flow – like a natural falling apart and coming back together. It was easier not to get stuck when change was all around and constant. Seasons remind me to look at life. I think that is what Palmer is getting at when writes that there is a season, an eternal cycle, that embraces growth and all the sorrow or joy, loss or gain, and light and dark, and even life and death.