November 3, 2013

Reflection for November 3, 2013: All Saints & Souls

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking home from work, toddling rather slowly down the root-rumpled sidewalks of Paonia, my feet crunching through great sad drifts of yellow and brown ragged leaves. The day had started out gray and chilly, and the clouds were thick and ominous, the weight of them heavy on my head. I was feeling pretty thick and ominous myself. It was the first of November, and everything felt like November, if you know what I mean, sort of old and cold and flat and hard – unforgiving as iron. I thought of Shakespeare’s great sonnet:

That time of year thou mayest in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

And that is how I felt inside, thinking about my father, as painfully, physically aware of his absence as if he were a sore tooth that had just been yanked out. It’s a shame there is no novocaine for grief. All my worries and sorrows felt like bricks I didn’t want to carry but couldn’t put down. I could have – and should have – been praying, I know, but instead I just felt very sorry for myself. Sorry for everything else as well. The whole world seemed to share my mood, and I took a kind of bitter satisfaction in the misery of life.

And then something happened. Or maybe nothing happened; I’m not quite sure. If it was nothing, though, it was a very large Nothing, as big as earth and sky combined. All I know is that the world turned around. I didn’t do anything; I simply stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky instead of down at my feet. There were still clouds, but they were no longer hard and gray; instead, they glowed with a kind of pearly luminescence, as if they were lit from within. There was not the slightest whisper of wind; everything was unexpectedly still and hushed, waiting for something, I didn’t know what. The whole world held its breath in that moment, and I held my breath along with it. Silence rang in my bones. The trees stood dark and wide awake, their branches held unmoving against the strange translucent sky. Not a single leaf stirred or trembled. I think if a dog had barked or a bird flown by, the universe would have cracked open. And there I was, on the threshold of Something, caught and held in the moment like a fly in amber.

If it had lasted much longer, I’m not sure I could have borne it. Everything seemed more real than it ever had been, and yet at the same time like something painted on a backdrop as big as the Cosmos. And reality – almost – seemed to ripple in that moment – as if a Great Hand were about to draw back the curtain. I didn’t move, I didn’t think; I stood dazed and dazzled, stricken and breathless.

Then a single leaf detached itself from one of the elms that lined the sidewalk ahead of me. The tree let it go like a pebble dropped into water; the leaf slipped into the pearly sky and began a slow and deliberate journey down to the ground below. I don’t think I have ever seen anything more real in all my life. The leaf was yellow and shaped like an arrow and it twirled very slowly as it slid down the air. For what seemed like a very long time it was the only thing happening in the whole universe. Then all at once the sun reached out and touched it as it fell. There was a kind of fierce and loving jubilation in the gesture – an ordinary leaf caught and turned to gold, blazing in the sudden light and filled with a wild glittering glory. And it wasn’t so much as if the sun came out as if I had just now opened my eyes and seen – or maybe, been Seen. One brief and endless moment – and then, like a paused movie being restarted, the world began moving again. I took a step; a raven flew over; a car came rumbling down the street. And I was almost as shaken and stirred as if I’d been a witness to the Transfiguration.

The Celtic Christians talk about thin times and places – occasions when the curtain between us and reality, between humans and God, thins almost to transparency, and you can briefly stand on the threshold and see the world beyond. This time of year, All Hallows Eve, has always been one of those times. We stand on the threshold between autumn and winter as we stand between life and death, or time and eternity. The door is always open, and the Light shining through it; we just seldom pause to see it.

I don’t know that this experience changed me. I’m still basically the person I was –grieving for my parents, complaining about my back, doing my very best Martha impression, too often “worried and troubled about many things.” But the difference is that I know it can be different. I remembered that there is more to the story than what I think I see. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Jesus says. Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Not a sparrow falls, and not a leaf, either – and certainly not my father, or your mother, or anybody else we love, including our own precious selves. I have always trusted in the seasons; I love autumn and do not dread winter, partly because I know that spring will come again. I am trying very hard to carry that trust into the rest of my life. We are all falling, it’s true, and falling is scary; it’s hard to let go of the tree and just plummet. But I think I’ve learned something from the leaves. I believe that, when we fall, the Light will catch us. And we’ll be caught, and gently cradled, by our God.

As Rilke put it:

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling

away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

May our souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen, and alleluia.

–Diane Sylvain