“He sat weeping on the shore, his eyes never dry of tears, and his sweet life ebbed away, as he yearned for his homecoming.” The Odyssey, book 5
We were already having cool weather before September came, and while we are still walking on the country roads around the house many days, some mornings we find our way to the gym or the mall, depending on our schedule and the temperature.
The leaves are starting to fall from our walnut trees, and a chilly breeze sometimes keeps us off the porch, where we have been having tea most mornings since the spring. But more than the weather has changed. The new semester includes two new preparations and a full load at the university. And, after 50 years in the classroom, I’m well past the seasonal delight of new pencils and crayons.
I did get a new MacBook Air, and this is the first thing I’ve written on it. As a professor, my tech needs have been well taken care of, and I’m grateful. But when you get a new computer, there are many passwords and subscriptions to manage, things that have been running quietly in the background for several years.
I am blessed. And I am tired.
Frankly, fall is not my favorite season, although I’d rather not jump straight to winter. I’ll miss the front porch and the long walks, the wild flowers and the songbirds. This afternoon I’m sitting on the front porch, the “south office” as I like to call it. The corn has not yet been harvested in the fields across the street, but the hummingbirds have gone away.
True to my southern roots, I’m sitting here with a carafe of iced tea. And I’m thinking about the literature course I taught this morning and how poorly I conveyed the relationship between homecoming and the heroic in our conversation about the Odyssey. Calypso offers Ulysses immortality—plus life on an island with a goddess— but he chooses to go home, choosing mortal responsibility over immortal pleasure. Such choices are heroic in a fashion.
The pleasures she offers him are sensual, of course, but as a Christian, it strikes me that you can choose both immortality and duty, although there is not a Greek goddess in the mix. And, at this point, Ulysses has been stranded on her island for seven years. Pleasure often brings bondage as well as delight.
I have frequently chosen duty, but not in any heroic sense. I consider duty to be what’s next, and even what’s best. But responsibility rolls in like the sea, or the seasons, with its rhythm and reversals. And reasons to rejoice.
I’m sitting here on a quiet Monday afternoon in the sunshine. There is a light autumn breeze in the air and a nice glass of tea in my hand. Katie is sitting next to me, eating an autumn apple covered with dark chocolate and caramel. It’s that time of year.
There are classes to prepare for and meetings to attend. But that’s tomorrow. And so is winter, for that matter. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).”
And it’s time for a walk, before the winter winds.
the daysman 