October: The Long Light and the Letting Go
October feels like a soft exhale. The heat of summer has gone, but winter has not yet arrived. Leaves turn gold, copper, and rust, and the year begins its slow descent into rest. In the Church this time is still Ordinary Time, but it leans toward endings and remembrance, the approach of All Saints and All Souls, the gathering-in of harvest, the hush before the dark.
This is a month of holy surrender. Trees do not cling to their leaves; the land does not resist the turning. There is wisdom here: that faith is not only about growth, but also release. October invites us to let go of what we cannot keep and trust that God is present in falling as much as in flowering.
The light lingers low in the afternoon, stretching golden across fields and stone walls. This too is a kind of blessing: not the bright light of midday, but the gentle light that softens edges and invites reflection.
From the Earth
Nature is in gentle transformation. Beech and birch leaves turn copper and drift to the ground, horse chestnuts fall in spiky cases revealing glossy conkers, and hedgerows shine with rosehips, sloes, and elderberries. Fungi appear in woodlands, fly agaric, bracket fungi on oak, tiny mushrooms clustering in moss.
Geese call overhead in hunched formations, heading south or west to winter feeding grounds. Mornings bring mist across fields, and the air smells of woodsmoke and damp earth. The land is quieter, but not dead, it is preparing, storing, deepening.
Those Who Went Before
St Teresa of Avila (Feast Day: 15th October)
Though not British, St Teresa of Ávila offers a depth of prayer well-suited to October’s contemplative mood. A 16th-century Spanish Carmelite nun, reformer, and mystic, Teresa lived a life of interior honesty with God. She believed prayer was not a task but a relationship: a gradual, often messy opening of the heart to love.
She once wrote: “Trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.” Her writings, especially The Interior Castle, speak of the soul’s journey through rooms, from noise toward stillness, from self-reliance toward surrender. Not perfection, but closeness. Not striving, but resting in God.
Teresa’s feast falls as the leaves start to fall too, reminding us that letting go can be holy, and that the soul, like a tree, sometimes grows by releasing.
A Prayer in Action
Sometime this month, gather a handful of fallen autumn leaves, any colours, any shapes. Bring them indoors and place them in a bowl or on your prayer space or windowsill. Sit for a moment and hold one leaf in your hands. Pray:
“Lord, teach me how to let go with grace.
Show me the beauty in surrender.”
Let the leaves remain in place through the month as your reminder: life includes falling as well as rising, and God is in both.
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens…
a time to plant and a time to uproot.”
