Fall is my favorite season. Always has been. I love football games on cold Friday nights, pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, crisp autumn mornings. And I like the color, something one notices on fall walks.<\/p>\n
Last October Charlotte and I got to spend a couple of days in Lewisburg, West Virginia, a place where fall foliage appears the way it is supposed to\u2014with all shades of red, yellow and orange in a truly diverse deciduous forest (pull up Babcock State Park on the Web).<\/p>\n
And I like the metaphor. If spring is hope, then fall is gratefulness. That\u2019s why Americans call our celebration Thanks<\/em>-giving.<\/p>\n Fall is a time to reflect on our blessings. And since this is a retirement blog, I need to say something about a lifetime of blessings. Retirement, like fall, is harvest season\u2014a period when we get to enjoy the fruit of our life\u2019s work (which is measured in more than monetary terms). Think of all the friends you have made, the knowledge you have gained, the maturing of a soul (however imperfectly) which God has shaped through good times and harder ones.<\/p>\n It\u2019s something to think about on fall walks when nature itself sings the songs of Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fall is my favorite season. Always has been. I love football games on cold Friday nights, pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, crisp autumn mornings. And I like the color, something one notices on fall walks. Last October Charlotte and I got to spend a couple of days in Lewisburg, West Virginia, a place where fall foliage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3452,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions\/3452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}