September: Harvest and Gathering
September feels like a hinge in the year: the last warmth of summer brushing against the first cool breath of autumn. In the Church, this is the season of Creationtide or Harvest, a time to notice the generosity of the earth and to remember that all things, wheat, water, breath, bread, are given, not owned.
Harvest is not triumph. It is humility: we receive what we did not create. It is also responsibility, to share, to give thanks, to care for land that is not ours to keep.
There is a gentleness to this season, but also an honesty. Fields are stripped, fruit falls, leaves begin to tire. Even in abundance, the earth prepares for rest. September teaches us that fullness and loss live side by side.
To live well now is to hold both gratitude and surrender.
From the Earth
The countryside is heavy with fruit. Apples swell in orchards, hedgerows are thick with blackberries, hips, and haws, and allotments spill with marrows, beans, and late summer dahlias. Fields are gold with stubble after harvest, and tractors trace long lines through misty mornings.
By late afternoon, the air smells faintly of cut straw, woodsmoke, and damp soil. In woods, conkers and acorns begin to fall, quiet promises of next spring already hidden inside them.
Those Who Went Before
St Hildegard of Bingen (Feast Day: 17th September)
St Hildegard was a 12th-century Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, healer, and visionary. Living beside the Rhine, she saw creation not as a backdrop, but as alive with the presence of God. She used the word viriditas, “greening power”, to describe the living energy of the Spirit in plants, people, and all created things.
Hildegard tended gardens and wrote herbal remedies, yet also composed music and theological works. She believed that to live rightly was to live in tune with the seasons, with the soil, with the movement of the Holy Spirit.
She once wrote: “There is a power that has been since all eternity, and that force and potentiality is green.” She is a saint for September, when green becomes gold, and God is seen in both.
A Prayer in Action
This month, take something you have been given by the earth: apples, bread, root vegetables, even a simple loaf, and give it away. To a neighbour, a food bank, a friend, or someone you barely know.
As you pass it on, pray quietly:
“As I have received, may I also give. Lord of harvest, make me generous.”
No explanation is needed. Harvest is shared or it is spoiled.
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.”
