It is here again.
When the first signs of autumn appear, something is awakened within that I can only describe as “that Autumn Intuition again.” I have had it all of my life. It is, thus, as familiar as an old school chum now—albeit a rather eccentric, but kindly school chum.
I usually meet my friend—my old chum—on a Saturday morning. He might have visited on a Thursday or a Monday, but I was too busy for him. For all of these years, I think I have welcomed him on Saturdays mornings. He comes with a note of winter, dancing in the northerly breeze, mixing it up with with his little partner, a single scarlet maple leaf, early to depart. As he comes I hear cheering—a great stadium—like Buckeye stadium in Columbus, or Snyder Family Field House in Manhattan, Kansas, or even a Friday night at Walker High School in Walker, Louisiana—filled with football fans dressed in reds, yellows, purples, oranges, browns, and blues—mixed together like shaved potpourri in a great, decorative bowl. I taste the sights and sounds of fall in a drink: a spicy mull. My friend likes mull. We drink together. He tells me things: things I know deep inside, but rarely speak. He speaks in whispers of the breeze. He speaks of a new time coming—something longed for, something better than I ever imagined. I don’t hear the words of my friend. I hear his presence resonating with the words of my own nature.
C.S. Lewis put is better:
“Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.” (Mere Christianity, HarperCollins, 2009 reprint of the 1952 original, 135)
I believe autumn holds a promise. I believe my friend will keep it.
I believe the sense of heaven is in the air in the fall.