16 October 2015
I am holding summer tightly as the fresh nights cool and
slow the garden and yard. The porch pots trail long, and the roses out front
burgeon in showy splendor.
It hasn’t
frozen yet, though leaves are turning and the Virginia Creeper over the fence
is brilliant red.
This week has been busy:
homework to hand in, produce to pick and preserve, appointments to endure, and
meetings to manage. Autumn’s nostalgic cues trigger longings I don’t even begin
to understand—yet they seem innate to my being and the season. I was born in
October.
Our background and environment (in the past as well as every
day) clearly influence our life roles, our motives and decisions, and the way
we interact with the world and people around us; even our aspirations and
hopes.
If I am a gardener I hope the frost holds off until the tomatoes are
harvested, and, can I get just one more cucumber?
I know the seasonal nuances
that announce change, having learned them from my parents who learned them from
their parents. They depended on the garden for food. Even if I never garden I
still know the softness of the air preceding a snow.
I have walked and worked
with many knowing mentors. Precept and example taught what they valued; I heard
their words and saw their choices.
So it is with our families, our marriages, and our most
cherished interpersonal relationships. The past, for generations, contributes
culture and expectations.
Some expectations are like Fall. We can’t even
explain them—they are instinctively part of our intrinsic outlooks and
attitudes.
Are the attitudes good or bad?
Usually neither, but agency and choices
may turn them either way—to our benefit and joy or to our detriment, and that
of the future.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ provides patterns of identity as
sons and daughters of divine beings; a father and a mother with purpose and a
plan for joy.
Scriptures and living prophets outline ideals.
And each of us
finds our own way to arrive as near or far from those ideals as we wish.
Increasing clamor to conform to more secular standards tests our sincerity.
Will the next generation know their divine birthright?
Can we model and mentor?