November 12 arrives without much ceremony.
All Saints has passed. All Souls has passed. Remembrance Day has passed. Christ the King is still ahead of us, and Advent is waiting somewhere beyond that, quietly unpacking the purple and wondering when it will be appropriate to begin humming O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
And here we are.
In between.
November is rather good at in-between.
By now, most of the leaves have given up their heroic efforts to remain attached to the trees. The garden has largely surrendered. The daylight disappears at an hour that seems faintly unreasonable. And every morning we look out the window and wonder whether autumn is still with us or winter has simply neglected to file the appropriate paperwork.
This is not November at its most glamorous.
But perhaps that is precisely why November has something to teach us.
Because there comes a moment when the trees stop trying to hold on.
They let go.
Not because the leaves were bad.
Not because summer was a mistake.
Not because the colour of October was somehow unimportant.
They let go because the season has changed.
And that may be one of the hardest spiritual lessons we ever learn.
The Holy Art of Letting Go
Most of us are much better at acquiring than releasing.
We collect possessions, responsibilities, expectations, grudges, anxieties, old arguments, and occasionally kitchen gadgets whose original purpose has been lost to history.
Somewhere in nearly every kitchen cupboard there is an object purchased with tremendous optimism around 2008 that has not been used since.
We cannot throw it away, of course.
We may need it.
One day.
For something.
The spiritual life can become rather like that cupboard.
We carry things long after they have ceased to give life.
An old resentment.
A disappointment.
A version of ourselves we thought we were supposed to become.
A dream that did not unfold the way we imagined.
A mistake we have replayed so many times that we have practically remastered it in high definition.
And sometimes even good things need to be released.
A role that once mattered deeply.
A season of life that was beautiful.
A ministry that bore fruit.
A relationship that changed us.
A way of understanding God that once carried us faithfully but has become too small for the journey ahead.
Letting go does not mean declaring those things worthless.
The tree does not despise the leaf.
It simply knows the leaf cannot accompany it into winter.
Faith Has Seasons
We sometimes imagine faith should be a steady upward climb.
Every year wiser.
Every prayer deeper.
Every doubt resolved.
Every sermon shorter.
Well, perhaps we should not become too unrealistic.
Real faith is much more seasonal than that.
There are springtimes when everything seems possible.
There are summers when faith feels warm and abundant.
There are autumns when gratitude comes easily because the world seems covered in gold.
And then there is November.
The branches become visible.
The landscape simplifies.
What was hidden beneath abundance is suddenly exposed.
That can feel uncomfortable.
But it can also be holy.
Because when the leaves fall, we finally see the shape of the tree.
And sometimes God allows our lives to become simpler for exactly that reason.
Not to punish us.
Not to impoverish us.
But to show us what remains when everything unnecessary has fallen away.
What Remains?
This season of the Church year keeps asking that question.
We have remembered the saints.
We have remembered the dead.
Yesterday, on Remembrance Day, we remembered lives given and lives forever altered by war.
And soon we will stand before Christ the King and proclaim that beneath every kingdom, every institution, every success, every failure, every human ambition and every passing age, there remains one enduring truth:
Christ is Lord.
Everything else eventually loosens its grip.
Titles pass.
Possessions scatter.
Buildings change.
Institutions rise and decline.
Reputations fade.
Even the things we thought absolutely indispensable eventually become yesterday’s urgent business.
But love remains.
Mercy remains.
Grace remains.
God remains.
Perhaps that is why Jesus so often told his disciples not to be afraid.
He knew how much they would lose.
Security.
Certainty.
Reputation.
Friends.
Eventually, even their lives.
Yet he also knew something they were still learning:
What we release into the hands of God is never simply lost. It becomes available for resurrection.
That is the strange arithmetic of the Gospel.
We give and somehow receive.
We surrender and somehow discover freedom.
We lose our lives and somehow find them.
It makes very little economic sense, which may be why Jesus never seems to have been invited to chair the stewardship committee.
The Bare Branches
There is something beautiful about a November tree.
Not pretty, exactly.
Beautiful.
There is a difference.
October trees are pretty.
They know it too.
They stand there dressed in scarlet and gold, posing shamelessly for photographs while the rest of creation quietly gets on with its work.
But November trees have stopped performing.
They simply stand.
Bare.
Honest.
Waiting.
And perhaps there are seasons when God invites us to do the same.
To stop performing.
To stop proving.
To stop pretending everything is fine.
To stop carrying what no longer belongs to us.
To stand before God without decoration and say,
“Here I am.”
Not the person I hoped I would be.
Not the person others expect me to be.
Not the person described in the biography.
Just me.
And the astonishing promise of the Gospel is that God looks upon that bare-branched honesty and says:
“You are mine.”
That is grace.
Making Room
Letting go is not merely about losing something.
It is about making room.
The trees release their leaves because another season is coming.
Beneath the cold ground, life is already preparing itself.
Buds are already hidden in branches that appear lifeless.
Spring is being prepared long before anyone can see it.
And perhaps God is doing something similar in us.
There may be things falling away right now that we desperately want to preserve.
There may be plans changing.
Relationships shifting.
Expectations being rewritten.
There may be questions for which we still have no answer.
But November whispers:
Do not confuse emptiness with abandonment.
Sometimes the empty places are simply where God is preparing to plant something new.
We do not yet know what.
That is the irritating part.
We would prefer God to provide a strategic plan, preferably colour-coded, with measurable outcomes and a convenient executive summary.
God generally provides daily bread.
Apparently, God considers that sufficient.
So Let the Leaves Fall
Perhaps today there is something you can release.
Not dramatically.
No trumpets.
No spiritual fireworks.
Just something you no longer need to carry.
A resentment.
A fear.
An expectation.
An old failure.
The need to control an outcome.
The exhausting belief that everything depends upon you.
Place it gently into the hands of God.
And then look at the trees.
They are not panicking.
They are not chasing their leaves down the street shouting, “Come back! We had plans!”
They simply let them go.
And stand quietly beneath the November sky.
Waiting.
Trusting.
Making room.
Perhaps faith sometimes looks exactly like that.
Standing before God with open hands and bare branches, trusting that what looks empty today may already be preparing for resurrection.
Because the God who teaches the trees how to let go is also the God who remembers how to make them green again.
And that is enough grace for November.
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Companion Prayer
God of autumn branches
and November skies,
you know how tightly we hold
to what has already had its season.
We cling to old hurts,
old expectations,
old failures,
and even old blessings,
afraid that letting go will leave us empty.
Teach us the wisdom of the trees.
Give us courage to release
what no longer gives life,
grace to surrender what we cannot control,
and faith to trust that an empty branch
is not an abandoned branch.
When our lives feel bare,
remind us that you are still at work.
When we cannot see what comes next,
teach us to trust the One who can.
And when we finally open our hands,
help us discover that you have been holding us
all along.
Through Jesus Christ,
the One in whom nothing offered in love is ever truly lost.
Amen.