We just changed the clocks back and now nighttime is falling on my small Ohio town at 5:20pm. I am fortunate that my office is located right behind our home. This makes my commute about 30 seconds on weekdays. Completing my day around 5:15 means as I lock my office door I do so with the last remnants of the days light. As my workday ends and I head home for the evening I find myself in the gray area of “in between.” A time when day is fading, and night has yet to be fully established.
Fall is also an “in between” isn’t it? In between the long warm days of summer and the short cold days of winter. It is a time of no longer and not yet. As a child, growing up in the 70’s on a small farm in Southern Ohio I loved winter. I loved the snow, I loved being outside and playing in the cold. I loved hot chocolate and drying my soggy mittens and hat on the register. In the 70’s snowsuits were a popular not just for skiing, but for ordinary kids playing in the snow.
My parents, always ones for a bargain, liked to shop places known for their discounts and sales. Both sets of grandparents lived in Cincinnati so we would often head to the “city” as my mother called it and shop at these enormous bargain stores. On one of these trips to the city my parents purchased snow suits for my brother and me. I guess I must have been in Jr. High and that would make Chad in 4th or 5th grade. On the clearance rack in the boy’s section, they found a black snowsuit that fit me and in the girl’s section they found an orange snowsuit that fit my brother. I don’t remember being particularly upset that our new snowsuits were not matched to our genders. Maybe Chad was more sensitive about that, but I think we both knew that it was no use complaining.
I loved that snow suit. I wore it all the way through high school, sliding it on in the morning over my PJ’s as I headed out to the barn to feed the horses before school. Winters in the barn were brutal. I would put hay outside in the hayrack after I fed each of the 10 horses their grain. And then waited for them to finish eating before I let them out for the day. I then carried all their frozen water buckets to the back porch where they would melt. Chad fed in the evening so he would take the water back to the stalls when he let the horses back in for the night.
Winter meant getting up in the dark and trapsing out to the barn alone in my trusty boys’ snowsuit. It meant playing in the snow and warming up by the fire. I loved winter. I loved summer too. The long summer days were spent swimming at the pool, working in the garden and relishing the freedom. It meant drinking out of the hose and playing with friends. Summer was the smell of the barn and seeing my grandparents more as they traveled from Cincinnati to our house to work their massive garden they maintained on our land. It meant eating outside and freshly picked tomatoes. Summer was hot and I loved hot. I still do.
Spring and fall, on the other hand, were just “in between.” They were not particularly cold or hot. Spring brought the anticipation of summer just as fall brought the anticipation of winter. In my youth I did not appreciate this gradual turning from one season to the next. I wanted the cold of winter and hot of summer. Not these unpredictable middle seasons.
I have become a bit more sophisticated as I have grown. I still prefer summer over all the seasons, but I have grown to love the spring and fall for their own qualities. I have become more comfortable in the “in between.” I can now appreciate the greening of the spring and the crispness of the fall. I appreciate seasonal treats of asparagus in the spring and apples in the fall. I love the pastel colors of Easter and rich warm colors of Thanksgiving. I love the traditions that each of these middle seasons bring.
As we have moved into fall this year, and I have acclimated myself to the “in betweenness” of fall, somedays warm and sunny and other days cold and unforgiving. I am reminded of a thought I had several years ago. In the mid 2000’s there was a lot of focus on what was called at the time the Post-Modern Era. Which was a way of describing the period between Modernity and what is to come. The church in particular was beginning to talk about this shift as we were moving out of one era and into something new, something different. It struck me then and still does today that throughout the centuries of civilization there have always been “in between” people. There are five main historical eras, Prehistory, Classical, Middle Ages, Early Modern, and Modern. It easy from this vantage point to label and classify them and see them as having distinct beginnings and endings. As if the line between each era was sharp and clear. But the sharpness only comes with the distance of time and perspective. For the people living through it you could say they experienced the falls and the springs, the areas of gray, that gradual movement from one era to the next. That is where we find ourselves today. We are the “in between” people. In the history books of the future this will be forgotten and the era that is to follow will have a crisp beginning as Modernity will seem to abruptly end to make room for the new. But we know the truth, there have always been “in between” people. Those who although unnoticed, were straddling two eras, going about their lives as one era ended, and another was just beginning. They saw the dying off as in the fall and rebirth and newness brought about by the spring.
As I look out from my half century vantage point, I am thankful for all the seasons. I understand now that the seasons provide a kind of symbolization that marks the changing from one thing to another. Our world will look different in the years to come, and we are just at the precipice of that change. We cannot see it, but it is coming. It is easy to focus on what we are losing, like the fall but newness and life is coming like the spring. Learning to increase our tolerance for the unclear, the gray, and the blurry will be helpful.
This is where we are in the church. Church as it is now will not last. It will fade away and something new will take its place. Letting go of the known and moving into the unformed, unknown future is scary. We are the “in between” people.
As I am making my way through the fall this year, I am being intentional and noticing the subtleties as they come. I am accepting that each day can be different which sometimes makes preparing difficult. I still like the summer best, and I am growing less and less fond of the winter and its cold. I am working to allow the unpredictability of fall to provide me a new way of seeing and understanding. I do not want to be afraid of what is to come. I want to remember that letting go and loss are a part of growth and new life. It isn’t easy but I trust it will be ok. The summer ends, fall begins followed by winter and then rebirth in the spring. The cycle completes and begins again. It will be ok, we will be ok, after all we are the “in between” people.