God’s Creation

The leaves are turning, the fruit hangs red and heavy on the crabapple tree outside my office window, the geese are clambering and grouping up for the long haul south, and just like that, it’s fall in Jackson Hole. Goodbye and Godspeed to our beloved summer residents. We’ll see you next year. You will be missed.

It is a season of ripening and maturing, movement and migration. Watch the squirrels at work, storing food for the long Wyoming winter, listen for the bugling bull elk as they play out their ancient ritual of procreation for the next month or so. Watch closely as the aspen turn green to gold and then drop their leaves to the ground, mulch for another season of growth next spring.

I’ve been thinking lately about how God’s creation constantly Creates, and how fortunate we are that the cycle of life - birth, death, and rebirth is so abundantly manifest in the natural world, here in Jackson Hole. It gives me comfort to know that we are not strangers here, merely trudging through a veil of tears, putting up with life in this world so that we can get to a better place (some call it heaven) after we die. We are alive, creatures in a world that breathes, connected to one another and to all living beings, and for that matter to all non-living beings. Even the rocks, rivers, and clouds sing out to us if we have ears to listen.

So pick and taste one of those hard, red little crabapples. You will be amazed at how both bitter and sweet can explode on your tongue in a riot of taste. This is a season that we relish here in this beautiful valley, precisely because it is so short, sweet, and a little sad. Don’t miss it. Stop once in a while and breath it in. Your breath is the same breath that God breathes into creation. Breathe in, breathe out. It is fall and you are loved.

Peace, Brian