This is a something I wrote about this time last year. It is only a fragment, a quote from a longer piece that was never actually written.
“…breaking this perfect circle of seasons, longing to dwell in everlasting Autumn, where trees shed their pretense, and souls bare their true colors.”
Let’s do some exposition. This is a simile, the tree being a person. We shroud ourselves in leaves, in smiles and manners, to cover up the truth. The leaves are very pretty, but the soul, and the truth, is in the branches, trunk, bark and wood. The reality of who we are, our hopes, what we struggle with are held on the inside. When you think of autumn, a few things come to mind, the closing of summer, the threshold we cross into winter, and of course, the colors. At no time of the year are we so stunned by the colors around us.
Yet something we must realize is that those colors are actually signs of destruction. Each change of shade brings the leaf closer to death. But it is not death without purpose, it is absolutely necessary for the life of the tree. And similarly it is absolutely necessary for us to shed our own pretense, and be honest about ourselves, honest about our faults, and ready to be changed. The analogy breaks down, as all analogies do, if you push it past a certain point, but the message is there.
Thus, in the end we see, that to be broken, in God’s eyes, is beautiful.