September

How many times has a September arrived in my life?  And every time, it comes without fanfare, without ceremony. As now. I get up and see through the window another morning, a plain, unremarkable morning, and, checking the calendar, I realize that it is yet another September.

But then I ask myself – is there in fact a plain, unremarkable morning? This morning, for instance. When I see the columns of light through the louvre, I feel the surge of newness in my bones, pushing me to the window to draw the slats aside. Tiny drops of water glisten on the iron rails of the patio and, below, on the petals of the periwinkle. The leaves of the trees rustle, and almost simultaneously a coolness rings my limbs and neck, and the curtains awaken.

One can attribute many things to many mornings, but not sameness. Every morning is like the first, has the wet gleam of the first – the moist, downy feel of a rosebud that has just emerged from its green sheath. By its sheer freshness, every morning resists comparison with past mornings, so that if one were to describe the eternal present one would have to portray it as the moment of the first light.

And so September morn unshackles me from hoary time’s vicious circle, from the firm grip of the calendar, which makes the wall on which it hangs no different from a prison wall with its tally of days.

Such a tally disappears when the inmate decides to ask for forgiveness. And then, while the iron bars remain, they become no more than the slats of the louvre through which the morning enters.

September makes me aware of my need for forgiveness.  September is the brother that I have offended, who has come to me to show me my fault, just between the two of us.  And, in such a situation, as Jesus counsels in the Gospel of Matthew, if I listen to him, he has won me over. But if I will not listen, Jesus recommends, “Take one or two others along, so that every matter may be  established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.”

Of course, there is a danger that I might not listen.  And, seeing nothing but the calendar, with still three months left, and a new set of twelve months coming after that, and so on, I might just take it all in stride, saying, well, this is only another September, nothing to be crazy about.  And if someone mentions anything suggesting the need to ask for and to offer forgiveness, I might just flash the smile of someone who has heard the same stories for a thousand and one nights, and who gets up every morning expecting more of the same at the fall of darkness.

But why should I not listen? “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts,” the psalmist says. September has the power to amplify the smallest sound, as though it were the threshold to a world of silence, in which the chirping of a sparrow or the fall of a leaf reverberates in the heart. September can turn each one of us inside out. The dry heat of noon makes roads glisten with rain puddles that keep moving away as one approaches. Afternoons are redolent of the smoke of bonfires. Towards evening the darkness of the heavy clouds does not give way to rain but expands with the light’s retreat. In such a mystifying world, September makes the mind enter and know itself.

And then the knowledge comes in the morning after a night of tears, for it seems that the task of the hours before the approach of light is to clear and prime the eyes to make them see the brightness of the first morning for the first time.