All this autumnal beauty is a halo around winter’s death and dormancy. This sublime enchantment is a last act, a valedictory display only possible because these leaves are starving. They will not go gentle into the night but blaze against the dying of their light. And here I am: stunned and grateful for their spectacular demise. Their long green life was only a prelude to this fierce pageant.
-James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time
I love this description of Autumn. It’s death but it’s beautiful. This mirrors the reality of our lives. Last week the chancel choir sang a beloved song “Sing Me to Heaven” for one of their longest-serving choir members at his memorial service. You could hear a pin drop in the final rest after the final note. Someone sang through them as if angels had joined the choir. Something bridged the ordinary day with the holy realm.
During this Autumn season, some of us are grieving the loss of a parent or a grandparent. Some around us just learned that a spouse or child has a life-threatening illness that will rob them of the time they had hoped to share in the twilight of life. Others face the significant transition of a kid off at college leaving the house feeling hollow and uncomfortably quiet. While some in our circle of friendship are saddened by the end of a marriage that ripples through wider circles with bruises to the soul. The tears and angst come unannounced and we are stunned by loss.
And yet, just as fall graces us with blazing beauty, something about the loss brings to the surface the precious nature of life. These moments bring us face to face with our mortality, our fragility, our finitude. We cannot pretend in these moments. And even amidst the hurt, something about life’s beauty and joy seem more accessible. It’s what author Anne Lamott calls “the really real.”
When the apostle Paul writes to the early Christians in Corinth he encourages them and asks them not to lose heart. He reminds them that life is fragile and not ours to keep, saying, “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God.” Our faith empowers us to see the “sublime enchantment” in the midst of sadness, loss and death.
Grace and Peace to you in these Autumn days,
Carla
