Plans for the Fall

Someone asked me the other day if I had plans for the fall.

It took me way too long to realize they were talking about the season of autumn, not the end American experiment.

OK. I stole that from a meme I saw on social media the other day. Who has time to be original these days? We’re all too busy making plans … for the fall.

I am pondering this while putting together the calendar for Western and Pilgrims for the next several months. It is a busy time, and nothing on the calendar has anything directly to do with the sad, scary, and stupid season of American political and social life that we are all living through these days.

How are we to be faithful in such a time as this? How are we faithful to the future? To the present time?

I think of a line attributed to Martin Luther: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would plant my apple tree.”

That’s a fine notion for an autumn full of events focused on the future. We’re busy planting seeds these days, and much of what we’ve planned for this fall amounts to nurturing the seeds. In the face of the creeping authoritarianism and the large-scale catastrophe unfolding all around us, planting seeds might feel foolish. But if we want to nurture a future in which human thriving blossoms forth we have to plant and nurture the garden today.

That’s my plan for the fall.

Oh, and I hope you’ll check out all of the opportunities for planting and nurturing that fill the autumn calendar as we work together to bring to full flower the new thing that God is growing in our midst.