One of the things I still have to decide whether I like or not about California, is the overlapping of seasons. As fall allegedly started, for several weekends I went on hikes hunting for yellow and orange leaves but all I found were trees holding on dearly to their green leaves. Today, if you go out in nature, you’ll notice that some of the trees are now losing their leaves while others almost started blooming. So it is fall for some, spring for others, yet winter on my calendar.

Although I always cherished the precision and consistency of seasons on the Mediterranean, yet I think life looks more like Californian seasons: overlapped and unpredictable.

Our lives are but successions of seasons, some good, some bad, some happy, some sad, some shorter, others longer and yet most of the times they seem to intersect and overlap.

As I was expressing my frustration over my uncertainty about the future to Pastor Pamela the other day, she reassured me saying: “it’s okay to be out of control now. Eventually, everything you’re working for and waiting for will come true.” What a simple but powerful way to look at our lives: to acknowledge that God is in charge, and because of that, everything will ultimately line up, but pin due season.

Seasons are biblical; the book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a season for everything. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) And thus there is a season for waiting. This is the season I find myself in right now. Certainly, not my favorite, and I bet it isn’t yours either.

With the arrival of Pastor Pamela, Parkview’s season of waiting was put to an end and we now entered the season of hard work and transformation. Veronica on the other hand is going through her season of preparation. And yet we find each other coming together, each in her own season, around the word of God and we celebrate the beauty and bounty of God every Sunday with you. You who, also, are going through your individual seasons each.

Friends, wherever we are in life, how beautiful it is to gather as one community and share together holy moments of grief, of celebration, of anticipation, of falling, of standing up, of recovery and healing.

Holy moments! Holy seasons!

Thank you for being so understanding and sympathetic to our individual journeys. What I ask of you at this time is to continue to be flexible and patient with all of us, especially myself, as I enter a season of discernment and self-search in order to figure out the next step.

Rola