Returning

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

THE spirit of returning is one of the most profoundly beautiful influences that help to mould the wayward life of man. Perhaps it is even the most beautiful, the most deeply significant. The very waywardness may be its work, since only out of departure can any return come to pass, since strife and restlessness alone can bring forth rest.

The philosophers say that God projected creation away from Himself in order that it might hunger and thirst to get back to him; and certainly the whole course of our human life bears out this theory. We are born with a cry on our lips, we grow up blindly, rebelliously, our entire development is a process of effort and pain; paradoxically, the more intelligently we enjoy things, the more they sting and fret us. Why? Because our finiteness oppresses us, our separation from the serene, competent Whole. We feel that all our experience is boundless, fathomless; and we have only a little dangling plummet with which to sound it. No wonder we long after the infinite capacity which seems to be our birthright but which our mortal destiny has inexplicably forfeited.

We do not always realize this with our human reason, although our instinctive preferences confess it accurately. From high to low and low to high in the range of experience, there are few of us who do not prefer the systole of things to the diastole. What an effort we have to make to resist the law of gravitation, and how comfortable is the inevitable giving over of the attempt and the serene descent of the hill! Still more commonplace is the every-day truth that most of us like to go to bed and hate to get up. There is a significance in the rapture with which we sink into the arms of sleep, letting ourselves go, entirely abandoning ourselves. And equally full of meaning is the reluctance with which we pull ourselves back in the morning, gathering, piecing ourselves together, taking up our partial ways.

Do we not make all our journeys largely that we may know the bliss of coming home again? We set forth blithely enough (the need of change is inherent in all humanity), and for awhile we feel no regret for the familiarity which we have left behind us. We glory and rejoice in the new, refreshing our eyes and hearts. But by and by comes the turn, the hesitating, pausing, and the slow looking back. The glory around us fades as if a cloud had come over the sun; and behind us the glow rests on the distant spot from which we set forth. Ah! then, according to our dispositions, we run or we saunter back, devouring the miles in our eagerness or protracting the pleasure that we may taste it fully. And when once again we stand on the thresholds of our quiet, familiar homes, was there any gladness of going forth to compare with this flooding bliss of return? We are back where we belong. We have tasted novelty and have found it good, chiefly as a spice to quicken the familiar. We have filled our hands; we would empty them now, and fold them, and yield them into the hands of the spirit of peace. We have come unto our own again, and our own has received us.

The grandeur of autumn has its source in this idea of return. The spring and the early summer are restless, quick and vivid, and thrilling with life, but unsatisfying. They are lavish in promises, half of which can never be fulfilled and the other half of which disappoint more than they gratify. They are contagiously vigorous, enlisting all life in the energy of their onward march. Way! Way! for the universe. It is at last going to declare itself, is going to make its goal. But after the full tide is reached in the most commonplace and uninteresting month of the year, after July has bored us with its heavy, monotonous foliage and its sultry days, after we are satiated with progress, then comes the blessed turn. August lavs slow fingers of peace upon the year. Never mind; come back. Perhaps it was not quite worth while, all this mighty stress and effort; perhaps the achievement was rather negligible. Coming back is always worth while, is always worth the most futile departure. Come back, come back, come back! All shall thus be well! Blessed August! It is as full of hope and healing as July is heavy with dissatisfaction. Come back? Indeed, we come.

But the return is gradual. Through weeks and months it feels its slow, sure, quiet way. It knows no relapses; with the coming of August, the stress has once for all gone out of the year. There is never any doubt which way the tide is facing. But there is an untroubled delay, a happy lingering. Returning is too dear a process to be wasted. Little by little, through the strong, serene days of September, the fingers of our peace reach after us and gather us. Sometimes, for very joy of our capture, we turn our faces and pretend to look the other way; September has some seemingly aggressive and independent moods. But never is there any deflection of our footsteps, any resistance to the blessed power that has laid hold upon our lives. We come, we come.

The whole symbolic earth expresses the spirit of its autumn peace. The mown meadows lie content, vibrant with the drowsy song of grasshoppers and crickets; the hills dream round the valley, veiled in sun-woven mists; the dim blue sky is full of slow, vague clouds. But the woods are the best home, nay, the very temple of the returning bliss. More and more silent they grow, as the days draw onward. Even the hermit thrush, their priest, ceases to chant in them; their shadows passively yield up the little flitting presences which filled them with subdued animation during the early summer. They become graver, more austere and gentle.

With the first frosts, the outermost trees begin the great change that makes their order the prophets of the autumn. They dip their fingers in the red sunrise. Little by little the glory spreads, stealing inward in waves of crimson and gold. One who worships the woods can then not afford to leave them a day unvisited, the phases of their transfiguration are so incessantly wonderful. They grow august and holy. A golden light floods them — not from the sun, but from their own being, like the face of a saint. Deep within them, the ferns, transmuted to pale spirits, bow in frail ghostly ranks. There is no sound. The very wind forbears. The return would seem to be almost consummated.

But it is the falling of the leaves that sets the seal upon the beautiful, significant process. There is no more thrilling, solemn sight in all the range of nature. In the beginning, a few at a time, they come drifting, circling downward, utterly careless and unobtrusive, yet deeply purposeful. With a sigh they seek the warm, pungent earth which is to each one of them the ultimate breast of God. Then more and more of them come. By and by, the dim, shining temple is full of the soft stir of their passing — frail shapes, crossing the motionless lines of the trees, floating athwart the shadows, animating the inner gloom. Their faint, sighing whisper voices the silence of the forest more poignantly than the hymns of the hermit thrush. If the wind still forbears, they fall slowly, freeing ihemselves of their own accord, knowing the uttermost joy of self-abandonment. Multitudes fall together, however, going hand in hand to their common end. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. They know what they want, and they take it together, deeply satisfied.

Death: it is just that. The word that we all combine to avoid, disparage, translate; yet surely one of the most beautiful words in our language. It is death that the leaves seek, the brook seeks, the year seeks, death that we all seek together. This is not unnatural in us; it is the most profoundly natural thing we do. We are partial creatures, temporarily blinded to all but fleeting, uncertain glimpses of reality; of course we long for the clear vision which we hope that the dissolution of our teasing senses will give. Heirs of infinity, inexplicably hemmed in now on every side, wc inevitably wish that we might come of age. We cannot, we would not hasten the coming, for the process itself is very good; but every step that lessens the distance deepens our content.

That is a song of returning. Poetry is full of such songs, and so is the common speech of every day. If we listen, we shall hear the burden everywhere the same.

Oh, dear, dim Goal, which incites in us such longing, the only longing that is ever satisfied, — what wilt thou do with us when we find thee? Allow us to rest in thy freedom and know thy immensity, or send us forth again to work among the shows of things? That is no concern of ours, that is thy business, we must leave it to thee. Our concern is to find thee now, find thee, find thee. For surely we have lost thee, and surely we are thine.