In the long shadows of fleeting sunlight in the days following mid-autumn’s Halloween festivities, we have had seasonal cold weather. There have been moments of snow flurries and light sleet, leaving a dusting atop the fallen leaves. Last week, as I prepared to walk to work, I told my wife and granddaughter that the forecast was for snow mixed with light rain.

“Will the snow stick to the ground?” My granddaughter wondered hopefully in her soft, tremulous voice.

“No,” I replied, “The ground is still too warm.”

Later that day, my wife forwarded a picture texted by my stepdaughter. It was of our granddaughter, smiling joyfully, bundled in a pink winter coat and navy blue snowpants, standing amongst an inch of snow in the yard of her parent’s country home. So much for the all-knowing grandpa and his forecasting skills.

The Farmers’ Market is providing seasonal food, including apples, cabbage, carrots, garlic, daikon radishes, Brussel sprouts, and late-season broccoli and cauliflower. In addition to an Indian-spiced stir-fry and pumpkin and Dutch apple pies, we have jarred sauerkraut from local cabbage and replaced it in the fermenting crock with a spicy, sour traditional Korean Kim Chi. We have removed the buckets of Concord grapes from the freezer of friends and are letting them slowly thaw before we add sugar, yeast, and a couple of other ingredients to begin fermenting them into wine. Honoring the Earth, year after year, means preparing food in keeping with the season, taking advantage of the abundance that we are gifted to receive in a human world of want.

As I walk home in the long shadows of the season, I have felt a deep loss, an energy pulling me into the ground as if I were a piece of steel and the ground beneath me were a powerful magnet. I feel as a dying leaf pulled to the ground by the irresistible force of gravity. I am experiencing the death of a dream that I had a few years ago, and with it the separation from those I share the dream with.

Leaving my career in computers two and a half years ago, I took a job at an agency working with people like me, thinking I would find like-minded sensitive coworkers working hard to help those in need. In terms of some of the frontline workers and the peer support staff, I did find this, along with clients in need of companionship, support, and understanding. However, I also found many unforced errors and ongoing problems that impacted clients and staff. I was shocked to find that services were wholly inadequate not simply because of lack of funding, but lack of insight on the part of top administrators.

I dutifully reported, again and again, failures in care and urged review and changes in the approach being used by the system. I was met with double-talk, inaction, hostility, and an arrogant insistence that only the top clinicians had the expertise to comment on the agency’s approach. Rather than face the problems, I was told that the clinic was “doing amazing work.” I was repeatedly undercut because I failed to play along with the charade that the clinic practiced “recovery-oriented” care and “continuous process improvement.” Crucially, from a key administrator I faced continual opposition and frequent hostility.

I believe in principles that I consider self-evident from the empirical reality that what goes around comes around. The first, to do good works as much as possible, is thwarted at the agency because so much of the agency’s work fails to actually benefit the clients. While the administrators have good intentions, their work is based on ignoring client outcomes and insisting they are doing great work regardless of results. The second principle, to withdraw from conflict whenever possible, is to minimize the harm I do, even if I believe I am pursuing a worthwhile goal. Most importantly, the stress I was under was impacting my family, and it is my duty to shield them.

On the other hand, I had few alternative paths to follow if I did not work at this agency. If I left the agency my work to complete a Masters in Social Work during the last two and a half years might turn out to be a futile waste of time. I might never be allowed provide therapy to people like me and their families.

In facing this choice, I offered up my angst to my higher power and asked for guidance and strength. The answer was to protect my family and leave at all costs.

After I felt that the peer staff, who had felt threatened by prejudice and insensitivity, were in places of relative safety, I submitted my resignation. In the resignation letter I explained that when I had talked to others who had worked at the agency, a number of frontline workers had indicated that services actually placed clients in potential risk and, given the lack of recovery services provided to people like me, I believed that the risk of services the agency provided outweighed the potential benefits. I could not serve at the agency in these circumstances. I know I am not the first person to leave the agency for this reason.

Leaving behind the clients and coworkers I have grown to respect and know is the spiritual death pulling me into the ground. It is a trial of recognizing that a false dream is ending while separating from people who I deeply wish to stay connected with. It will be the first time I have not been employed for almost 29 years and while I relish spending the holidays with my family, it is a foreign and bewildering reality to not know the next step with concrete certainty.

To my surprise, even before I had formally submitted my letter of resignation, the principles I try to follow offered me a new beginning. I was approached by a woman with the credentials needed to supervise me in therapy for people like me—a necessary step before I have a private practice. Knowing my dilemma, she kindly offered to provide the supervision needed. The woman is a close friend of a woman in our community whose son years ago had experience psychosis and who I had volunteered to help the Mom understand her son and how to work with him.

The principle of doing good works had guided me to do this volunteer work over a decade and a half ago without consideration of a reward. Now, in my time of need, the energy I had offered was offered back to me. I was stunned by the unexpected offer, deeply honored, and filled with growing gratitude. Without this gift, pursuing the dream of providing therapy to people like me might be permanently out of reach; with the gift, the dream was made more likely than if had I stayed and undergone endless conflict and failure.

In the growing darkness of the season, I am looking back on the previous year of discord and suffering while I sought to reclaim many of the things that I had lost due to years of stress in my work life. Though good works are without thought of reward, the events of the past few weeks has helped me reclaim my faith that doing good works, building community, and withdrawing from conflict are all practical parts of Earthly spirituality. They are, for those who seek to follow a path of works, the means to enrich the garden of family and friends that Voltaire’s Candide reminds us we must tend.