The Spirituality of Autumn

August 10, 2004 == MEDIA ADVISORY

In their new book, Autumn: A Spiritual Biography of the Season, Calvin College
English professors Susan Felch and Gary Schmidt locate spirituality within
autumn's whirl of activity.

"There's a very big sense of being engaged in autumn," says Felch. "This is
not a contemplative season. It's a very challenging season."

So, in the book's 40 essays, poems, prayers and hymns apples thump to the
ground, gardeners pick their final summer bouquets and begin planting bulbs,
children clamor aboard school buses, animals migrate, devouring combines run
down the rows and survivors of 9/11 cope with its aftermath.

The second volume in a series, Autumn (Skylight Paths Publishing, 2004)
explores the deeper meaning of the season through such devices as Anne Lamott's
story of a community rallying around the family of a sick child, E.B. White's
account of his wife's unorthodox gardening methods, Bart Giamatti's lament for
the end of the baseball season and Robert Louis Stevenson's walk through a fall
landscape.

"They all speak to one another," Felch says. "If the seasons are a gift from
God, then there has to be a way in which they elicit from us responses to
God."

To harvest a compelling collection of writings which reflect those responses,
the two editors comb libraries, the internet and even their own memories.

Gardening is a recurring theme in Autumn and poetry is a major vehicle to
explore it and other topics.

There are poems from the Harlem Renaissance, from Robert Frost, from Korea,
from World War I and from a more recent tragedy. The book includes two poems
from eyewitnesses to destruction of the World Trade Center.

"We knew with autumn that we'd have to do something with September 11," Felch
says.

The book, illustrated by Caldecott Medal-winning Mary Azarian, also features
pieces by lesser-known authors, including offerings from recently graduated
Calvin English majors Tim Avery and Abram Van Engen and a poem by Calvin
English professor Deb Rienstra.

Like its predecessor, Winter: A Spiritual Biography of the Season, the new
book samples a wide range of cultures and faith traditions - from a Vietnamese
boat song to African harvest prayers.

Autumn also follows a spiritual cycle: Change, Endings, Work, Harvest and
Thanksgiving.

Each of these sections begins with a portion of the Book of Ruth, a love story
(as translated from the Hebrew Bible) set against a background of harvest.

"There is a rhythm to it," Schmidt says, "even though we know people aren't
going to read all the way through."

Yet, he says, even read at random the book holds together.

Skylight Paths Publishing originally approached Schmidt about serving as
editor of the series in 2002, and he recruited Felch to the project.

Winter, published in 2003, was the top-selling book at the Walden Bookstore at
Walden Pond.

The editors are already at work on the summer edition of the series, due next
year.

Contact Susan Felch at 616-526-6591 or felch@calvin.edu or Gary Schmidt at
616-526-6540 or schg@calvin.edu
Also see http://www.skylightpaths.com/books/059.htm

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Received on Tue Aug 10 10:32:30 2004