A reflection on "Creator Spiritus" by Geoffrey Bache Smith, a poet and close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien.
As autumn loosens the branches, I’ve been thinking about friendship, gratitude, and the Spirit who scatters to create again.
walks with Olive…
The wind has that edge again—
the kind that shakes loose what clings too long.
Around this time each year, I feel the same scattering inside me:
a soft undoing.
The light thins, and even the dust seems weary.
Lately, I’ve been rereading Geoffrey Bache Smith’s Creator Spiritus
and thinking of his friend, J. R. R. Tolkien—
the one who gathered Smith’s poems after his death and carried them into the world.
I love Tolkien’s work, but even more, I love that act of friendship.
It’s a kind of thanksgiving, isn’t it?
To honor what another began.
To tend what might otherwise have been lost.
Smith’s poem names the wind as Spiritus Creator—
the creating Spirit.
Not destroyer, not chaos, but presence.
“Till at the last the wind upheaves
His unimagined strength, and we
Are scattered far, like autumn leaves,
Or proudly sail, like ships at sea.”
That image stays with me:
the Spirit who scatters also sends.
Every fall, we’re reminded that creation begins again in release.
The breath that moves through the garden also moves through the grave.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how friendship, too, has its seasons.
Some arrive like spring—sudden and tender.
Others mature in the warmth of shared summers.
And some, inevitably, drift into autumn.
We speak less. We change.
Sometimes we’re scattered not by choice, but by the quiet hand of God,
who sees what we cannot.
He knows when a bond has borne its fruit,
when distance might protect rather than wound,
when a chapter must close for something deeper to take root elsewhere.
The scattering, painful as it is, can also be sacred.
It’s His way of pruning what has served its season
and replanting what must grow in another soil.
““One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.””
October has been my own small season of harvest—
gathering what has grown quietly this year: words, habits, healing—
and beginning to store them for the colder days ahead.
There’s a sweetness in slowing down,
in letting the work ripen before it’s shared.
As I step into November, I’ll be feasting a little.
I’ll share some festive dishes and a few reflections on Tolkien’s work—
beginning with the friendship that inspired this post:
the way he carried Geoffrey Bache Smith’s words as a sacred trust.
Tolkien reminds me that the creative life, when rooted in love, is never about achievement.
It’s about devotion.
About tending the good fruit another began.
After that, I’ll take December to rest.
No striving. No production.
Just quiet, reading, prayer, and preparation for the year ahead.
When I return in 2026, I’ll begin a new series focusing on The Fruits of the Spirit.
Each reflection will linger with one fruit—love, joy, peace, patience—
as a lived texture rather than an ideal.
My hope is that, by spring, we’ll see what has quietly ripened after the scattering.
For now, I’m trusting that what falls is not wasted.
The wind remembers.
