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Saturday, November 2, 2013

Meditate on the Last Things

By Ruth Ann Pilney



File:John Everett Millais - Autumn Leaves.jpeg
Autumn Leaves by Millais (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).


Watching the beautiful autumn leaves fall reminds me of the temporality of earthly life. An excerpt from Bambi, a children’s novel by Felix Salten, is a dialogue between two oak leaves clinging to a branch high above the others.
     “So many of us have fallen off tonight we’re almost the only ones left on our branch,” said one. 
     “You never know who’s going to go next,” said the other.
     “Can it be true,” said the first leaf, “can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we’re gone and after them still others, and more and more?”
     “It really is true,” whispered the second leaf.  “We can’t even begin to imagine it. It’s beyond our powers.”
     After a period of silence, the first leaf said quietly to herself, “Why must we fall?”
     The second leaf asked, “What happens to us when we have fallen?  Do we feel anything, do we know about ourselves down there?”
     “Who knows?  Not one of all those down there has ever come back to tell us about it.”
     “Let’s not talk any more about such things,” said the first leaf.
     “No, we’ll let it be.”
Many people eschew discussing death, but at this time of year the Church encourages us to ponder such things: death and judgment, heaven and @#!*% , the end of the world, the second coming of our Lord and Savior, and the establishment of the Reign of God.  We wait in joyful hope!


Ruth Ann originally posted this at her blog From the Pulpit of My Life.

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