It happens to me each time the first cool snap of Autumn appears…the blue of the sky grown poignant with the low humidity blown down from the north; the sedge along the roadside and in the delta ripening into gold fruitfulness…the sunlight now at a mysterious slant… gently questioning the undulations of the bay…In my hometown accross the state one can smell in the air of dusk the peanut harvest, a moldy sweetness that used to comfort me as a child in the night hours….We slept with the windows open last night, open to the sounds of coming change…Though my father died long ago in August, it is at this time of year that I think and dream about him most…It happens to me at the turning of the season, this season in particular, that I think of death….its cold coming….for those I know, for those I love and loved….for me…Wallace Stevens coined the phrase “death is the mother of beauty.” For thirty plus years I’ve pondered solemnly that mystery that the poet named. I feel I’m learning to trust it now.
We have only to open our eyes to know the truth of it…as the darkness approaches, as the length of days wanes…the earth shimmers with beauty. At the dying of the light the earth feasts…and we would do well to join her. It is not because of the knowledge that life cycles around again…It is simply because death has her own beauty…and if beauty, hope. My mother told me just a few months ago that being seventy eight she feels her vocation now is to die creatively…she’s healthy, and not being morose..but she says she wants to make meaning of her last days; she says she has discovered joy in that.
In November we will, as the church has done over the centuries, account for our dead. In our liturgy we will endeavor to make meaning of the reality of death … we will celebrate the lives of our ancestors in the faith, the wise ones come before us…the saints who struggled and thrived to make meaning of a life in the midst of death… Icons for us that life is worth living until death eases us into the cycle of becoming….until death eases us towards perfection….until death eases us into the mystery from which we came…Let us not despair…Let us feast.
