SEASONS by Ruth Calder Murphy

“For Everything there is a Season.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1 - The Bible)

Depending on where we live, the four seasons impact our lives to a greater or lesser extent. People living in the far north of Europe, for example, experience, every year, months of uninterrupted darkness - and therefore, also months of uninterrupted sunlight. Some of us feel the rhythm of the seasons very strongly - the ebbing and flowing as leaf buds form and burst, daylight stretches out and then shrinks back, as the once-young leaves change color and curl and tumble and fall.

Wherever we are on Earth, the Seasons impact our lives to some degree. There is, quite literally, a time to sow and a time to reap, times of rain and times of drought. The book of Ecclesiastes, quoted above, doesn’t only talk about these very physical, literal, geographical seasons though. It goes on:

“ a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.”

This is true, in all phases of life - the good and the challenging and the downright disastrous. Everything in its season. Knowing this doesn’t make the difficult seasons easy, but learning it can make breathing through them more possible. Perhaps it should also make us more willing to hold the good and the beautiful in a lighter, less grasping, more expansive way - to accept the gift of them, without becoming too possessive of them. For everything there is a season, and every season is a gift..

Seasons

by Ruth Calder Murphy

Seasons

For everything there is a season -

for golden birth,

erupting from the wakening of Earth,

all pastel-dawns and dewy-breasted,

energised and newly-rested,

ready for refreshing rain

and butterfly kisses,

for sunbeams and snow-melt streams

and dreams stretching out and coming true -

ready to be born anew.

For everything there is a season -

for light and heat

burning in the brilliant sky,

all blossoming-bright and alchemy-bold,

full of life and nothing yet too old

to fold in Summer’s hard embrace,

ready for anything - whatever the day may bring -

and everything alive and strong as the Day,

brimful with sunshine and ocean spray…

For everything, there is a season -

for tumbling down,

spinning to the leaf-mulch ground

to soften into Mother Earth,

decomposing towards evening,

to feed the dreams of trees

and grow the whispers of next year’s leaves,

sleeping in the softness

of gently rotting bark

and dissipating towards the dark…

For everything, there is a season -

curling into catacombs,

the darkness of Winter’s tomb,

feeding worms in the belly of Earth,

where the grave becomes another womb

and Death gives way again to birth.

For everything there is a season

and every season’s yours - and mine -

a gift in vast Infinity,

wrapped in transient Time.

Ruth Calder Murphy is a creative artist, music teacher, wife and mother living in London, UK. Her life is wonderfully full of creativity and low-level chaos. She is the co-author of two published novels, The Scream and The Everlasting Monday, as well as The Dance series of poetry, which consists of seven volumes to date. More of Ruth's spiritual poetry can be found in her book, Spirit Song and the soon-to-be-released sequel, "River Song". She is passionate about celebrating the uniqueness of people, questioning the unquestionable and discovering new perspectives on old wonders. You can visit Ruth and view more of her art on her website, or on her writer's page on Facebook. All her books are available on Amazon, here.

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