How Do You Know When a New Season of Life Is Beginning?

I recently returned from two weeks on pilgrimage in Assisi. Having been gone for a big chunk of late September, and experienced ‘summer’ weather in Italy, it was a shock to find it is October and that the mornings are already dark! The air feels different, there’s the smell of autumn, the crunch of leaves, and I realise I have somehow missed September, the transition into autumn. It feels very abrupt and I don’t feel ready for it.

The seasons more often change gradually and without us necessarily being aware – nature is following its rhythms and the temperature is changing, but we might be busy and not seeing the signs. It’s not usually as sharp a change as I experienced!

While I was in Assisi, I visited the small chapel where Francis of Assisi spent his last days, and the adjoining area that marks where he died. In the large cathedral that has been built over these humble spaces, the place where he died is labelled as being where he made his ‘transitus’ – Latin for ‘passage’; the place where Francis ‘transited’. This place felt like a thin place for me, being right where Francis died exactly 800 years ago this October.

Francis spent much of his life outdoors, paying attention to the world around him, aware of the seasons and willing to be present with the rain and the sun. Francis seemed to have a deep sense of belonging as part of creation, within it rather than apart from it, and perhaps this helped him to receive his own ‘transit’ as another passage within the rhythms of life.

There was something about the use of the word ‘transit’ that resonated – not death as an ending, but as a passing into the next season. A transition.

This all got me thinking about the seasons we have in our lives – and whether we are always aware when a new season is emerging. Like me believing it’s still summer even as October begins, do we sometimes keep following familiar patterns even when the signs around us show us that things have changed? Or could it be that sometimes we don’t want to recognise a ‘transition’ when it means that something has finished, or now just isn’t as it was?

Recognising a new season of life

Can we be with ourselves in quietness, and ask ourselves:

• Have I changed?

• Has something come to an end?

• Do some of the patterns of my life not quite fit the way they used to?

• What am I carrying with me into the season that is emerging, and what am I leaving behind?

It can be scary to become aware of the new season, because it may mean that we need to leave behind patterns and ways of being that have sustained us well. When we sense that something has changed, we may resist paying attention because we may not feel ready for what the change might ask of us or what we may be asked to leave behind.

But being able to notice and stay with an ending can enable us to be open to what is emerging in the new season.

Listening to what is beginning

Instead of focusing purely on what is not working, or what you might be laying down – can you also listen to the invitations of your life? What is beginning? What are the desires you can feel tugging at you? What do you feel a longing for? Where do you sense an invitation?

A good way to reflect on this can be to spend time somewhere in nature and notice both signs of new life and of transition or endings. It’s clear in nature that these are part of the same cycle – and in every season we can see both, if we’re willing to look.

These are the kinds of questions you can bring to spiritual direction, where someone can help you to pay attention to what your life is telling you through the seasons, walking gently alongside you as you notice what may be emerging and what this new season may be inviting you into.