As I looked out the window, I couldn’t help but notice how the autumn season was displaying herself.
The fullness of life and death all in one view. It reminded me of the liturgical environment created two years ago in chapel when one of our sisters made her perpetual profession—another display of life and death exhibited through nature.
That is what the vows that we, as monastics, profess are all about—embracing the inevitable death of some parts of ourselves that must happen in order to experience the fullness of life.
The self-centeredness, the desire to accumulate, the close-mindedness—all of this and more must go.
What parts of yourself do you need to embrace to live and to celebrate life? What parts must slowly fade, like what we witness in nature during these autumn days?
Let us walk in the holy presence.
Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond
Mary Oliver
As for life,
I’m humbled,
I’m without words
sufficient to say
how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,
and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched
though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen —
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.
Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort —
along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.
Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort —
along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?
