Drink the light of leaves
that paint the path of the wind.
Taste. See. They must fall.
Autumn, like each season, is a great teacher. She teaches the path of releasing life to give life, the path of dying to live. Wise teachers and traditions have taught the same thing that autumn trees teach: dormancy, dissolution, death and decay are integral parts of the great pattern of life. And more than this: some things must depart and die away so that the enlivening energies of the Spirit can be revealed.
Each day now I go to work and spend my days with elders, women and men who are living in the twilight years of human life. From one point of view, great losses and departures define their days. For a long time this was all I could see in the lives of elders, and it frightened me terribly.
I recall my grandfather's face--its deepening lines and especially his eyes--revealing the chronic pain that gripped his heart muscle during most of his waking moments. I remember my maternal grandmother's own heartache at the absence of my grandpa, and how it seemed to grow through her years of living alone, rather than subside (as I secretly wished it would). I remember her writing me weekly letters when I was away at college, and how I wrote only a few brief notes in reply. I was afraid of the pain and losses of my elders. And such fear defines our culture. We fear the losses that are an inevitable part of aging and dying. Our fear prevents us from seeing that in all of this there may also be gift.
The elders in my life right now are teaching me to release fear. They are teaching me to look deeper, and see the way in which deaths and lesser losses sometimes reveal a light that could never be dimmed with aging or dying. Like the wind-tossed leaves of autumn, the paths of their lives reveal the shimmering colors of the Spirit, the One who blows through all.
