FALLING INTO DIVINITY

IN EARTH'S NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, fall is arriving with a painter's flair, splashing crimson and gold across the landscape. Days grow shorter, the light softer, the air crisper.

- CYLVIA HAYES

Trees transform into blazing towers of bronze and scarlet. Fields and orchards offer up an abundance of fruits, grains, and vegetables. Of all the seasons, each with unique splendor, autumn perhaps most clearly reveals the divinity and glory woven through all of nature—of which we humans are a part.

I was not taught to think of myself as divine. In fact, I was raised in a family and community that believed God was an “out there,” judgmental, and sometimes punitive super-being and we humans were all born sinners, eternally flawed, at least until we died and hopefully made it to a Heaven “up there” somewhere. I didn’t find this to be a very empowering worldview but rather a psychological mindbender that took decades of therapy and soul-searching to move through.