The Texture of Autumn

I am often torn between empiricism and transcendentalism. A mouthful of words there, but that’s about as pithy as I can get. Why do human beings look at a year with its four seasons and so easily see it as a metaphor for a human life cycle. The seasons are the result of the tilt of the earth as it orbits the sun, aren’t they? Less light and colder weather triggers trees to shut down for the winter. Trees don’t really die; they simply lose their leaves as sap flow is conserved for the tree to weather the winter. Nothing metaphorical about it. There is no universal being sending us messages through nature about life.

But I just can’t help it. It seems too apparent that Spring (I capitalize seasons, get used to it), is like birth and growth; Summer like the productive years of a human adulthood; Autumn, in the brevity of its glory, is so much like old age and dying; and Winter is like Death. To walk under a tree that is exploding with yellow and peach and not feel a change in mood is impossible for me. And, I know I’m crazy, but, when I’m alone in the woods, I often have to stop and feel the bark of a tree. I feel the texture, but I also imagine that I feel the spirit of the tree, like a heart beat, and I feel that I communicate with the tree and know that the message comes from the roots and the soil and the moisture and the sun in the leaves and the wind in the branches and I find that heaven and earth are connected through the tree itself. It is as if human beings disconnected from this language thousands of years ago when we formed words on the tongue and started to speak with the mouth rather than speak the heart and spirit.

Or is it merely a tree’s bark that I feel? No meaning in it at all. Evolution—descent with modification—is random, says the empiricist—no meaning or a sense of purpose behind it at all. But I do not think it is human to live without meaning—even if that meaning is a Who rather than a Why, if that meaning is found through Love. Ah, Love, says the empiricist, does not exist—only biological urges, drives, predetermined genetic coding for the survival of the human species—that is all. If I am to believe the empiricist there is no love and no meaning, then I live in a rather cold, unromantic world. I have a hard time accepting that. But what ever is true is true regardless of what I can accept or not accept.

If I am to believe the empiricist, even I do not exist—I, that is as an entity, as a person. I am but a stimulus-response machine. There is no self, only what can be called personality formed by genetics and environmental conditioning. I am also brain chemistry, alter the chemistry and alter my personality.

So I am stripped of meaning, love, and even a self. Does anyone really believe that? Does anyone really live that way? It seems so apparent that there is more to the world than that. Don’t you, dear reader, sense it too? Put your hand on the bark of the tree sometime. Feel deeper than just the texture. Feel the texture of the soul of the tree, the soul of the earth, the soul of the sun on which it also feeds. Touch the bark of the Cottonwood, sacred to the Lakota, the one tree at the sacred center, of the sacred circle. There is a lot of air and water in Cottonwood. It seems to speak louder than other trees.

If this seems insane to you, consider this: a world without love, self, or meaning is a far greater definition of insanity. Look it up: Insanity—without reason. If all that exists is the result of randomness, then there is no reason for anything. So I talk about apparent reason. It is reason that is implied or inferred from all that is, but cannot be proven—proven in the empiricist sense anyway. Our intuition, as subjective as it may be, ought to guide us in to meaning and purpose, not objectivity. This is counter to our training and education—to the current meta-narrative that science takes such stock in. Not that I ignore science—science deals in the world of facts, but I do not believe that facts are Truth. It may tell us if some things are true, but it does not deal in Truth. Truth, just like the elusive person or self, must be known intuitively, and, like a person or self, can never be fully known. It is inexhaustible. Truth is not static, not an absolute, the way to know it is not rational. It is ever changing and yet ever the same, it is paradoxical. But the human mind, not brain, can grasp the paradox. The mind goes beyond the brain, stretching out, dreaming, and conceiving the impossible. The mind is unlimited and its imagination is boundless. This imagination will take us to the stars in great ships, one day. The Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, the Mayflower, the Endeavor, the Enterprise and thousands more will leave this little orb and sail through the universe like dandelion seeds on the wind. We have only to imagine it, and dream it, and it will become real.

So I am reflecting on Autumn, the inward and outward Autumn, reminding me of my mortality and my immortality: the brain that dies and rots, the mind that rises to meet infinite thought and becomes one with God, as the Apostle says, in the day when all things return to God, who will be all in all. That which is born of the flesh is flesh: that which is born of the spirit is spirit. The empiricist; the transcendentalist.