Fall, Falls, and the Fall

Years ago, when I was a fairly fresh PT, a resident with dementia and not a care in the world started sing-song chanting "fall, fall, fall" as another resident did in fact experience a slow fall. September 22 being not only the first day of autumn (fall) but also Fall Prevention Awareness Day, let's see whether I can link those things together with the fall of mankind!

What is "Fall"?

According to Merriam-Webster . . . (source)

• Intransitive verb
• Descend or hang freely by gravity
• Drop oneself lower, intentionally or unexpectedly
• Become born (lambs)
• Drop in pitch, volume, degree, or level
• Die or be captured (military)
• Commit an immoral act (sin)
• Assume a look of shame
• Happen at a certain time, by assignment, or by chance
• Come within someone's/something's jurisdiction
• Suddenly enter a new state of mind or consciousness
• Noun
• Dropping
• Autumn
• Birth (number of lambs)
• Loose-hanging costume decoration, collar, trouser flap, coat edge
• Collapse
• Declination of a hill's slope
• Felling or number of trees felled
• Adjective
• Relating to autumn
• Phrases
• Fall apart
• Fall behind
• Fall between two stools
• Fall flat
• Fall for
• Fall from grace
• Fall home
• Fall into line
• Fall (up)on
• Fall on one's face
• Fall on one's sword
• Fall short

Fall - Autumn Highlights

Despite my preference for using words with single meanings (thanks, C. S. Lewis and Strunk and White!), "fall" comes more naturally to me than "autumn" does. As a reader, academic, and outdoorsy person, fall is my favorite season, with spring coming in a very close second. 

Great Fall Reads

Reading-wise, my birthday book haul always comes shortly before the first day of fall, so I am never at a loss as to what to read. The bookish instincts revive from any slump they may have experienced over summer. What am I reading now?

• The Out-of-Sync Child by Carol Kranowitz, a preschool music/drama teacher knowledgeable in sensory integration therapy for children with sensory processing disorders. I've known for some time that I may have a proprioceptive seeking tendency, and Husband tends in the opposite direction, so the book has been informative for both of us from an adult perspective as well as what to watch for in Child.
• One Faith No Longer book by Christian sociologists George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk. I put that on my wish list after Alisa Childers recommended it during an interview on one of her favorite topics, progressive Christianity. This is a more academic read, despite being written at the popular level. Essentially, it shows by multiple sources of data that orthodox Christianity (which may or may not overlap completely with evangelicalism) is essentially a different religion than is progressive Christianity (heterodox).
• The Power of Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church, both of a Harvard think tank on educational practices, particularly at the elementary and middle school levels. I am starting this book as part of a faculty book club. A misconception I had going in (undoubtedly influenced by my recent read about Liberating Structures) was that the "visible" things would be more drawings and art-type materials. I appreciate the authors' focus on writing-as-thinking in the ideas I've glanced at so far. On further reading, Ritchhart & Church's work rings strongly of Charlotte Mason (narration), without necessarily an awareness of her methods.

Great Fall Outdoors

Child and I are still focusing on getting 500-600 hours outside for this calendar year (450+ as of this post's publication), and I have found myself able to get a surprisingly large amount of reading done that way, despite the need for constant supervision. My secret weapons? Interesting sidewalks/paths and the umbrella portion of the stroller. I can balance a book on the stroller and follow Child, reading with one eye and watching with my peripheral vision.

I love many things about fall. The combination of crisper temperatures, changing leaf colors, and availability of nature hiking locations puts me in a very pleasant mood. Usually, this incentivizes me to read more. Child and I often have the playground more to ourselves during school hours (no exposure to grade-school potty mouths). Finally, fall clothing options make me happy too--sweaters, turtlenecks, and skirts/sandals. (My unofficial motto is "open toes until it snows.")

Fall Consternations

Any season has its disadvantages, depending on your perspective. While fall is my favorite season, followed by spring, summer, and winter, there are a few things I would change about it if I could. Less daylight overall, plus cooler temperatures that decrease the amount of skin I can use to let the sun make my body make its own vitamin D, means onset of seasonal affective symptoms as the clouds increase. My job also is busier in the fall, meaning more time spent indoors than I would prefer. Finally, although this may change, navigating Daylight Savings Time with a toddler is . . . energy-intensive and routine-disrupting.

Fall Prevention - Physical Therapy etc.

Since graduating with my DPT, I have worked with older adults in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and their own homes. So, the phenomenon of falling, and various strategies for preventing it, have interested me for at least that long. Every September, the National Council on Aging asks health care providers and associated people to observe Falls Prevention Awareness Week to highlight the preventable nature of many falls, which are the leading cause of injury in older adults no matter where they live or how physically fit they are.

A recent blog post from a Concordia University Wisconsin physical therapy faculty did a nice job of summarizing many ways in which different professionals can advise and treat older adults to reduce their fall risk.

• Occupational Therapist - home safety evaluation, cognitive/activities of daily living work (e.g., functional incontinence and falling in bathroom)
• Primary care provider - oversee care, main source of referrals/orders
• Pharmacist - drug-related falls, interactions, review to streamline (Beers criteria have been developed--with most recent update in 2023--for potentially inappropriate medications for older adults, many of which increase fall risk)
• Physical Therapist - individualized exercise for limited strength, endurance, balance, flexibility, or power that can cause falls; direct and refer to community-based exercise programs (long-duration, 3+ months)
• Other providers such as ophthalmologist and ENT specialist - make sure patients can see and hear adequately where they go to avoid obstacles

Fall of Mankind - Theological Musings

One important doctrine in Christianity is the fall of mankind--man and woman having been created in God's image and obedient to His instruction, sinned by acting opposite to His command about the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The primary doctrine stemming from interpretations of the Fall is that of original sin. I won't go in to deep, since your church's teaching about original sin and the mode of creation are likely to stir discussions that are best had face-to-face.

That said, I want to recommend two books that are also on my TBR: anything by John Walton (especially on Genesis 2-3), and Allert's Early Christian Readings of Genesis One. If you've been reading my blog for at least a year or two, you may have seen that my views on the mode of creation (how God created the world and its contents) have shifted. From what I've read about Allert's book, the church fathers were not in universal agreement about many aspects of creation (except for the fact that it had occurred sometime in history) . . . but that did not hinder them from laying the groundwork for various core doctrines such as Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Trinity.

What is the first implication of that non-agreement that jumps out to me? That the mode of creation (young-earth, old-earth, day-age, theistic evolution, etc.) is not a core doctrine of Christianity. In some circles, it has become tied tightly to the rest of Christian doctrine so that if younger Christians delve into life and earth sciences and become convinced of something other than young-earth creationism, their faith falls apart unnecessarily.

There are likely other implications, but I won't get into those now!

All Fall(s) Together - Surprising Connections

As you've seen from earlier in this post, the word "fall" is a pretty versatile term, whether an intransitive verb (no object), noun, or adjective. The overarching connection I'd like to draw among the three diverse senses of "fall" I explored in this post is the notion of descent of ___, normal or abnormal.

• Fall (autumn) involves the normal descent of leaves from trees to the ground, weather temperatures, and the quantity of daylight
• Falls (especially of older adults) involve the abnormal, unanticipated descent of oneself from a higher to a lower surface or position
• The Fall of mankind (into sin) involved the abnormal, deliberate descent from full bearing of the image of God into a broken image (a book has been written about this with an interesting title)

What other connections did you draw?