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Driving through the Vermont mountains yesterday, the trees were beginning to hint (in some places not so subtly) at that change of season which in this part of the country can be so breathtakingly beautiful.

Beautiful, but ambivalent, for me: this final, dazzling array of color heralds the loss of those same leaves, shorter, colder days, and the slow retreat of the sun. And sure enough, waking up in the mountains to this 40 degree morning—it has begun. That little wobble in the Earth’s axis is doing its thing, carving a path towards winter.

In-breath, out-breath. We take in, we give up. We win, we lose. We reach new understanding, we find new confusion. We get warm, we get cold. We experience brilliance, we stumble around in the dark. The seasons of our lives progress with predictable repetition.

I’ve spent this week letting go of things. We worked around the house last week to clean out an enormous amount of “stuff” (to call it anything else would dignify it, really, in a way that it doesn’t deserve.) Some of you might have “stuff” like ours—the box that you’ve been storing since your last move that you still haven’t opened; that photo Aunt Edna gave you in 1985 that’s still face down on the “until I find a place for these things” shelf. Boxes and boxes of books for donation, clothes for the shelter, even surplus pieces of office furniture and supplies, unused, just taking up space.

And the moment the clutter got loaded into the car for delivery, behold: space. There are rooms that have space in them now. Of course, my first instinct was to think, “hm, what can I put in this space?” But my second instinct was, “hm….this space is lovely. I think I’ll just sit with this space for a while.”

Letting go of the things that we no longer have use for, just as the trees do, makes space for the next new growth. And resisting the urge to immediately fill that space allows the growth to be organic, spontaneous, creative, genuinely authentic. Moving out the clutter and sitting with wide open space can be exhilarating. If you think about it, that’s all we’re doing when we meditate—mentally moving out the clutter, and sitting in the wide open space.

During the next month, I’m going to be sitting in wide open space. I’ll be on a type of spiritual retreat where I’ve moved big pieces of furniture out of my life, physical, relational and emotional, and I’m going to try sitting in that space for a while. It feels both exciting and scary. There are times when I’m certain I’ll be lonely, and when that empty space feels like an aching wanting to be filled.  But truthfully, every winter feels that way to me, and I’ve not had even one year of my life where spring failed to show up, right on time.

So I’ll be letting go of stuff I no longer need and moving it out of my emotional and mental house.  Stories that no longer serve me about who I am or who my friends, co-workers or neighbors are. Habits and practices of body, mind and emotion that are simply taking up space, not doing anything useful for me. Even a few extra pounds that are just hanging around, taking up space.

The de-cluttering process can require some effort, boxing that stuff and moving it out—and, as I said, that newly discovered space can at first feel lonely, like an ache that needs to be filled. But it also ultimately allows me to move around my “house,” including the houses of my body, mind and spirit, with greater ease and a greater sense of spaciousness. Ultimately, new leaves will grow in, smaller, brighter, more alive, and take the space that was created for them.

Follow the season. What are you ready to box up and move out? What no longer serves you; what has fulfilled its purpose? Give thanks for it; enjoy it in a moment of colorful beauty, and then, when you’re ready, let it fall off.

It might be a season rather than an event, a process that takes time over days, weeks or months rather than a simple decision. The initial space might feel empty; it might even feel “bad.”  But sit with it for a while, sit in that empty space and watch it shift, which, in my experience, it always does.

Welcome to Fall, that brilliant period where all of the things we have been working on for an entire season come to fruition, reach their peak, fulfill their purpose, and then drop away to make room for the next. Breathe out! Make space; spring is right around the corner.