Raining Promises

It's raining promises on my roof.

Another one just landed with a clunk. I looked up from my book and listened as it bounced and rolled down the roof, landing with a soft thud in the grass.

The two old oaks by our house have been dropping acorns for weeks. Our yard is littered with them, rolling underneath our feet wherever we walk. The deer come every night to graze by our driveway. Squirrels run frantically back and forth, obsessively gathering and carrying them away, when there are far, far more than they'll ever need. Hundreds of them, no, thousands – tens of thousands of acorns – a surfeit. A feast. An abundance.

This has been a bumper year for acorns. I've read that every few years oak trees do this – perhaps to outsmart all the forest creatures who feast on them. Too many to possibly eat, the rest are left to sprout. Young seedlings – new forests, right here at our feet.

This morning I picked up one of the multitude, just out of curiosity. It was already softening and had cracked open, and a tiny sprout was threading its way out. I set it back down in the damp autumn mulch of dropped leaves. A forest planted.

Autumn is, I think, too easily misread. We watch the falling leaves, shiver in the chilly wind, and see outside our window the dying of summer. We dread the harsh weather to come and quail at the brief days and long nights. But I tell you this: we see only part of the whole. The acorns whisper another message. Autumn is not a dying; it's a letting go of the abundance, yes, the color, the beauty and vigor of summer. But it's also a holding on. The dead grass hides the resting earth. The empty trees attest to staunch strength of branch and trunk, to drawing down of sap deep into the protective heart.

And, I would remind you, it's also a time of giving. Nature giving to the future. It's raining promises.

I've read that some years an oak tree can produce 10,000 acorns. Ten thousand trees, lying there in the grass, missed by the deer and the squirrels, quietly threading themselves into the ground to patiently wait for spring. Yet of that abundance, only a one may survive and grow into a tree. One small promise, but that's enough.

All too soon the colors of autumn will be gone, and we'll be looking out our windows at the snows and frosts of the winter. But let's remember the life waiting to come forth. It's there. Nature is infinitely patient. Wait, she whispers. Draw in. Keep strong. Give what you can, and then wait and trust.