"And the Leaves that Are Green Turn to Brown"

It is with some reluctance that I acknowledge that summer has ended; that the days and nights of warmth are almost gone; that the long hours of daylight are growing shorter; that the cold winds of winter lie not far ahead. The times of year I love the most are when things are growing and blooming, changing and producing.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

No, fall is not my favorite season, but it does mark a major cycle in the year, and perhaps it also offers us a metaphor for human life as well. Perhaps fall can offer us a symbol of what our own lives can be as each of us transitions with each passing year to later and later stages in our own life.

I liken the metaphor of fall and the seasons of the year to the stages of life that are considered by followers of Hindu philosophy and theology.

***(There is no one Hindu religion. There are many. Kind of like there is no one Christianity – there are tens of thousands.)

Hindus emphasize that each human being is unique and that each person must follow his or her own unique path. There is no one “right way”. There is no “common” type of person. Each person is different, it is said. But Hindus suggest that human life, in general, CAN have four phases to it.

The first stage (called the Student) is the time in a person’s youth where physical growth, learning about one’s body and the world around them occupy their time and energy. It is the time for schooling and apprenticeship. It is a time of great transitions. It is like the season of spring in the yearly cycle. The person is new, is young, is green, is growing. They are like a blooming flower which unfolds with beauty and grace.

The second stage of life is thought, by Hindus, to be that of “Householder”. This is the stage where family, career, and community are of the greatest importance in a person’s life. During this period, a person’s physical and mental powers are at their zenith. Their energy turns outward into the world. Personal desires such as wealth, power, and fame are given great attention. It is like the season of summer. It is the time when the person grows the most and produces the most. (It is, you might say, the “hottest time” of a person’s life.)

Unfortunately, many people (particularly in our culture) are never able to leave this stage of life. They become “stuck in it” as it were. They refuse to ease or abandon their desires of passion, of wealth, of power and control. They refuse to acknowledge that their body is growing older; that their physical beauty is on the ebb. The great sadness is that the physical body will inevitably continue to age and a person stuck in the phase of “Householder” can lose their sense of meaning in life if they attach such meaning to their physical beauty, power, or control.

No matter how important a person is, no matter how great their contribution to humankind, they, and all their accomplishments will inevitably fade into the vast halls of time, like the brilliance of a tropical sun which falls below the horizon; its light eclipsed by eternal night.

People who were once great and powerful become shadows of their former selves. Their names and their works eventually become lost in the annals of time. ***(Experiences seeing the rich and powerful lying on a hospital gurney; no one paying particular attention to them.)

In the words of Huston Smith: “Generation after generation swells briefly like a wave then breaks upon the shore subsiding into the anonymous fellowship of death.”

Some people are simply never able to change and to transition to later stages in life. Some people even lose their ability to interact with the people and the times of a younger generation as they grow older. They become fixated in bygone eras. They spout trite clichés, like “the good old days”, or things are going to hell in a hand basket, or this younger generation is in decay.

Writers and politicians have been using these phrases for thousands of years and curiously, every succeeding generation seems to eventually adopt these phases. So just when were the good old days? Does every succeeding generation really move deeper and deeper into decay from some glorious age long ago? Not likely.

It is also unfortunate that our own society and culture encourage people not to transition to later stages in life; not to accept that age will bring changes, both physical and mental. Unlike many cultures in the world, American society has lost respect for age. In many cultures, it is the direct opposite. In many cultures age is revered, honored and even sought after.

But in America, instead of integrating older people into our society we segregate them by encouraging them to leave the mainstream of society. Some families abandon their older relatives. We hear ads that offer older people dreams and visions of what the good life might be in other parts of the country such as Florida or the Southwest.

In our society, it is as though we suggest that a person’s life should be an eternal summer; that fall cannot and must not be able to enter a person’s life. To do so is NOT OK our society says.

And, of course, product manufacturers and marketers cater to human vanity by promising to reduce, reverse, stall, or change the aging process. “I’m fighting aging every step of the way”, one woman says in a TV commercial. Does she really think that she is going to win?

And tell me, what looks more absurd than an older person, who attempts to look and act like an adolescent?

But there CAN be a third stage to a person’s life if they allow it to be so. For Hindus this is the time of retirement; the time of the “Forest Dweller”. This is the time when the person and often their spouse or partner expends most of their energy considering the larger questions of life.

They search for life’s meaning. They immerse themselves in spiritual quests. “They look, in the words of the Hindu, not at the village streets, but beyond the stars.” The priorities of society, career, and even family are left beyond. Eternity alone remains.

In their spiritual quests, older people often explore various avenues of discovery. Some travel. Some read more. Some do volunteer work. Some take on a new hobby. There are limitless ways to seek the spiritual. (We have talked about this here before and we will continued to talk about it).

In my mind, retirement is the time of life when a person can develop a new but different kind of beauty. It is like the time of the fall. Who here cannot resonate to the magnificent beauty of a New England Fall? Where once a green blanket of forest leaves sweltered in a summer heat, now there shines brilliant hues of gold and red and brown emblazoned in a cold, crisp, and sunlit air?

We marvel at the changing seasons, yet we run in terror from the seasons of human life. We acknowledge the beauty of the spring and the summer and we watch with awe the changing leaves of fall, yet we refuse to see beauty in our own brother and sister creatures who are following the same path of nature. It is as though we are fixated on an eternal human spring: a type of spring that is not possible in this world.

Fall is a time of harvest. It is the time when all that has been produced can be gathered together to sustain life in the future. So too is our human Fall. The later years in life CAN be a time of harvest. It is when wisdom and personal growth can be the greatest because it is the time when a person is seasoned with the most life experience.

That wisdom comes with age is NOT a given. Age does not bring wisdom. Wisdom must be sought after and this is a lifelong activity. In my view, wisdom comes by integrating ALL the phases of life that I have mentioned. (Spring, summer, and fall).

I guess what I am suggesting is that to find wisdom, we all need to live and relive these different stages of our lives throughout our lives. We need to integrate the student, the householder, and the forest dweller throughout our life. A piece of us must retain youth and youthful thinking. A piece of us must strive to be connected to family, community, and career (whatever that might be). And a piece of us must reach forth into the spiritual dimension to consider the ultimate questions of life.

Just as time moves on and the seasons repeat their cycles, our lives must move on and repeat the cycles that enable us to grow as people. This is how wisdom is arrived at.

Age without seasons is just that: age. Life can and will lose meaning if we do not integrate the seasons of life into our heart; if we do not recall the learnings of youth, the experiences of middle age, and combine them with the feelings, spiritual and otherwise, that we arrive at in our later stages of life.

We all know this to be intuitively true. All of us know older friends and family who become so possessed by their own aging they focus only on their bodies and not on their heart and soul. We know older people who cease to discuss anything in the world except perhaps the ills of the body or the turns of weather in the day. What has happened to these people?

If a person takes the attitude that the later years in life are nothing but a fight against inevitable death, their life will be nothing but a miserable struggle against forces they cannot and will not control. But the later years in life can be the most rewarding, the most inspiring, the most beautiful.

I am reminded here of the late life phase of the Century Cactus.

When I was in seminary in Berkeley California many years ago, a friend of mine invited me out to his family’s weekend home in the woods of Sonoma County. During our time together, we found ourselves discussing the merits, or lack thereof, in growing older. Later during this conversation, he took me out to the edge of his property and there stood a magnificent Cactus about eight feet tall.

But more spectacular was a stem which reached upward from the middle of the cactus about 25 feet into the air. At the top of this stem was a huge brilliant orange and yellow flower.

Upon seeing my amazement at the beauty of this Cactus and its flower, my friend explained to me that this was a Century Cactus which bloomed only once in its long life. It seems as though this particular type of cactus lives about 80 to 100 years. About one year before this type of cactus dies, a stiff stem begins ascending into the sky with a large bud. Finally a brilliant flower appears which lasts for several weeks and then the entire plant dies. Human life can be like this too.

Our grandest moments, our greatest growth, our greatest wisdom can come toward the end of our life if we choose to make it happen.

There is a fourth stage that Hindus recognize and they call this the stage of the Sannysan or Saint. A Sannysan is a person who has reached a great depth in spiritual discovery. They have moved beyond the desires of wealth, fame, passion, and beauty that often dominate the earlier phases of life. They have become detached from personal desire.

To be sure, not everyone ever achieves the stage of Sannysan. In fact, few people do. But note that this stage of life is considered by Hindus to come toward the end of life, not at the beginning or the middle. It is recognized that a person must achieve all the other stages of life before sainthood is even possible.

Can the stage of Sannyasan or saint be likened to the season of winter as I have likened the other stages to spring, summer, and fall? That, of course, depends upon you own theology and belief in what happens at the end of life and beyond.

For me the seasons are a clue about life and death in general. I see spring as the beginning of new life. I see winter as the end. What was once alive and changing, and growing is no longer alive. But perhaps death, like winter is a transition to a new beginning.

But all the theology, all the creeds, and all the dogmas will not answer the ultimate question for sure. Each person can only answer ultimate questions for themselves in some way. This may means adopting a particular religious viewpoint or it may mean developing one’s own thoughts and ideas or dreams and visions. It is and it must be a very personal thing. I will certainly consider this in a future sermon.

But despite what we do not know, there are things we can know. We can know that life, all the stages of life although different can be well worth living if we choose to make them so. Integrated together throughout a lifetime, a person who finds and experiences and lives all the seasons of life will be happy and wise and whole. They will be a joy unto themselves and to those who share in their life.

C.J. McMahon

UUMH, October 6, 2024