Sauce for the gander

  So, the summer is over.  We enter into the season of 'mellow fruitfulness' and the greens of spring and summer turn into the reds and golds of autumn.  Mornings begin to be mistier and cooler but there is still the occasional blast of heat during the day.
  This is the season of Harvest Festivals; of seeing the fulfilment of what God has been creating in the world.
  For those of us who come from Nottingham, this is also known as 'Goose Fair Weather'.  It is this atmosphere of late September/ early October that we associate with the arrival of the annual fair that has taken place on the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday of October for the last 700 years.
  As its name suggests, the Fair began, not as the huge funfair that it is today, but as a livestock market and fair.  Geese would have their feet covered in tar and be herded from Lincolnshire and Norfolk to be sold for fattening for Christmas.  Hence the name: 'Goose Fair'.
  So, whereas autumn is often regarded as being the end of summer and the end of the growing season, it is also a point of looking forward - to the start of the dark nights and the preparations for Christmas.
  To some people, the thought of the long winter months ahead rather than the balmy days of summer may sound and feel depressing.  But, in fact, this period of autumn brings a huge amount of optimism and reasons for thanksgiving.

Think about the fact that :
  * The new educational and church programme year is getting underway with all the promise and opportunities that they bring to help us grow in understanding and faith.
  * We enter into the darker days, knowing that God has provided for us all that we need spiritually and physically to see us through to the next spring and summer and beyond.
  * Through our Harvest giving, we will have given help and contributed to the wellbeing and hope of the Karen People, exiled in Thailand from their traditional home in Burma.
  * We tentatively begin think about the planning of our celebrations of our Saviour's birth: Good News for all of humanity.
  * As Easter people, we celebrate the fact that, without death, there can be no celebration of new birth and new life.  So we give thanks for the autumn that allows spring to come again.
 
The Risen Christ says: “Behold I make all things new!” (Rev 21:5)
Yes!  Autumn gives us much to give thanks to God for - unless, of course, you are a goose and the road sign is pointing to Nottingham!

by Graham Clarke.