It has been a glorious autumn. Blue skies, warm days, colours now changing, the swallows wheeling around above our heads for one last time before they set forth on their long journey. Yes, we could do with some rain and a resolution to the Europe debate but farmers ( like all businesses) are going about their tasks in the normal way: cultivating the ground and planting new crops; buying their replacement ewes for next year’s crop of lambs; repairing fences; looking ahead….
I’ve been to my usual batch of funerals through the year. They mark the end of an era or occasionally a life cut short sooner than expected, yet through the tears, whether of sorrow or pride, families gather together and plan for the future. The next generation takes over, as naturally as night follows day, bringing their ideas into practice yet respecting the history, the experience and the skills of what and who has passed before. New opportunities abound; things change; they move on. The Buddhist description for this is ‘impermanence’, which sounds an insecure and worrying concept to me. Yet whilst nothing is permanent, in a way everything is continuous, and therefore does go on ‘for ever’. It's the circle of life, as the well-known song from The Lion King reminds us - even in these times of uncertainty, that's really quite reassuring.
