Falling

Fall always feels like the last season of the year to me. Winter starts so late in December that the year is all but over by then.  We who live in the Pacific Northwest are preparing for the usual gray, drizzly, short days so when we get gifts like today (and tomorrow is supposed to be even nicer), we store them up like the squirrels are currently storing up walnuts.

This year the leaves seem much more striking than usual here. The reds and bronzes, crimsons and carmines, the golds and yellows dance in the sunlight and I gaze in awe at them. This blaze of beauty seems a bit of a paradox as the year is winding down towards its end. Another example of new life rising in spite of a world preparing for winter rest: with the fall rains the grass has returned to a rich, almost spring-like, emerald green.

As I was out walking Charlie this morning I pondered the amazing plan of creation that causes deciduous trees to go through such a gorgeous transformation just before they become bare, stark, exposed.  I wondered about this process in people: do we have an age of transition into elderhood during which a new kind of beauty shines out from us? There are some who say that human beings often become more beautiful as they age. I’m not so sure that’s true if we use the world’s definition of beauty to measure this process. But then, not as we see does God see.

Often gracefulness and a discernible presence of wisdom and kindness can shine through certain older people; a twinkle in the eye or some gleam of deep knowing that is its own kind of beauty. I think this comes as we begin to accept that we cannot control most of what happens in our lives, that we can only control how we respond to life. It comes as we stop worrying about how we look to others and start actually looking through loving eyes at all around us. We learn to let go of things, not take them so seriously, to stop judging and comparing. We learn to be thankful for the many gifts we have received and put aside our wish-lists and our expectations for more. We become less driven and more willing to be. Well, some of us do, anyway.  I think those are the gifts of beauty that can come to humans in the autumn of their lives.

This time of year is also traditionally the time that we in the Catholic tradition remember those who have died, who have touched our lives, made us better people. Many Spanish-speaking countries celebrate Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. The first time I was in Mexico I was appalled at all the skeleton-people I saw; little dolls or statues of skeletons dressed in all manner of garb: a garish yet joyful celebration of life after death. Perhaps their culture has it right and we have it wrong: bury the people we love and then try to forget about them. We don’t like to think about the possibility that the dead might still have a role to play in our lives.

Early this morning I was lying in bed, mostly asleep, when I heard a flock of Canada geese fly overhead, honking to encourage each other as they travel south for the winter. At the time I wasn’t thinking about this being All Souls Day, one of the “thin days” in the Irish/Celtic tradition, days in which the veil between this life and the afterlife becomes so thin it allows the dead to pass back into the land of the living.  I fell back asleep after hearing the geese and had a dream in which John came to be with me. He just held my hand to reassure me, to encourage me on my own journey. 

This dream brought me a great sense of comfort that no matter what happens in the autumn of my life, there is beauty to be found, grace and gifts abound. It’s all in the way I look at life and how much I am able to let go of how I look to others and what I am no longer able to do. I pray I will always have the strength to smile and laugh, to be grateful and joyful, compassionate and kind, and to know God finds me and all of us beautiful.