In Autumn

For All Souls Day 2022

Picture a parasail. That huge parachute overhead filled with air. The way it jerks open urgently as it's filled with wind. And so sudden. It is as if there is no runway at all.

Now picture you. Picture you strapped to this large canopy. Strapped into some seat, by some belts, holding on maybe, letting go maybe. 

You are rising in the air. Bound to the boat pulling you, grounding you. Bound to the parachute pulling you, raising you hire. 

This is how I feel in autumn. 

This is how I feel as the earth edges from summer into fall and fall into brisk winter. 

This is how I feel when we talk of our dead. Of the ones we’ve lost. Of the one’s we’re losing. 

There is something pulling me, pulling you, pulling us all    forward, fast and firm. There is something pulling us farther from yesterday             and so              further from them, the dead, our dead, the sweet summers of before.      

And there is nothing to do but            hold on. 

And isn’t that the irony? That what we’d like to clutch and feel. What we’d like to hold for safety, for our heart’s salvation            is exactly what we must let go. 

Oh beloved. Oh love. Oh life as we had known. 

We are being pulled    forward, fast, firm. 

But this life. This life is not to be dragged through. And their life. Even its absence, even its waning                  their legacy was never meant to ruin our living. 

And so, we learn to hold onto what we can. We learn to let go of what we must. We learn that with time, and memory, with bits and bundles of joy, with tears whose wells never run dry

we are somehow lifted into another world, which is also this one, which is also one we’ve never known. Which is also one we’d never choose. Which is also the one we must. 

Where the gust of their spirit and the spirit of life lift us larger than the force of time. 

You are strapped to the large canopy that is stitched by life and loss and life again. You are strapped into some seat, by some belts, cradled by and clutched to those who love you. Letting go into the love that still grows. 

You are rising in the air. Bound to the boat pulling you, grounding you. Bound to the parachute pulling you, raising you high. 

Oh beloved. Oh love. Oh life as we had known. 

Thank you thank you thank you.