“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for everything under the heavens. A time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep; and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What advantage has the worker for his toil? I have considered the task that God has appointed for the sons of men to be busied about. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without man’s ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11)
Emma thought of the passage again as they walked a trail worn bare in pasture by years of grazing and watering cattle back to stand of woods in strip pit bottoms further on. Beside the bare earth trail, as wide as a set of tracks, one in front of the other, blades of autumn’s grass gathered dew that dampened pant legs and boots as each stride shook and soaked new from further beaded blades.
Ryan walked silent, and Emma sensed his mood and wanted to know.
“What time are you living now?” she asked.
Even in the early light, the change of the timber showed: the highlights of hedge in their yellows and golds, and beginning hints of scarlet in the oaks even in morning shadow before backdrop of breaking light.
There was a cool in the air for which the world had waited, further signal and sign of summer’s surrender to the next.
Ryan looked ahead to the sky of rising light and horizon hues of fall’s becoming.
“A time of transition,” Ryan answered.
In the cool of the air and warmth of rising light, she sensed tension of the paradox—strain between sadness and loss and, too, hope in possibilities—a beautiful melancholy in all seasons of change.