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Fall - A season and an action
Fall is a beautiful season when leaves change color and sunlight glows softly in the early morning and late afternoon hours. The same word, fall, has another meaning, as when leaves fall from trees. We cannot do anything about the season of Fall, but we often do something especially if we or someone we know takes a fall.
Most people enjoy the season of Fall but certainly are not appreciative when they see a valued article fall from a table or fall from their hands. However, when it comes to some of our habitual thinking or ways of acting, we might be pleased when we decide to let them fall away when they no longer serve a good purpose. Especially when we reflect on what we were thinking and how we were feeling when we became angry or fearful, we might receive the insight that these responses are neither required, nor do they provide any benefits for us. Rather than persisting with such patterns, we can let them fall away when they occur and thereby introduce new and more positive habits.
Change is possible for us, as it is for the seasons, but we choose to do this, while the seasons do not. We know ourselves well enough, especially if we reflect on our experiences of anger and fear, that we rarely have a choice about whether these movements will take place in us. But we can develop skills at choosing between letting them continue to roil and disturb us or letting them quickly fall into the past for the sake of interior peace.
We do not want people for whom we care to stay angry or afraid, whether they be our dearest companions or others who are not at all close to us. We intuitively and quite appropriately desire for them a restoration of peace in mind and heart. Love is like this for them and for us: a calm sense that we are basically good as we are, not a state of anxiety or forcefulness. Coming to learn and believe this is one of the most important insights we can receive.
Rather than somehow achieving on our own such a solid belief that we are loved just as we are, limited and imperfect as we know ourselves to be, we are invited to fall into it, much as children who are accustomed to playing in a swimming pool delight in falling in, trusting that they are safe in doing so.
God is all good, all love. There can be no safer decision than to fall into this goodness and love.
Last Updated 11/14/2026