All Hallows' Eve 2024: A Message from the Trees

I paused on the path in the park, stock-still, listening and looking for birds betwixt and between the boughs and billowing leaves overhead as others strolled, strode, sauntered, and cycled by. 

I was caught off-guard in that moment, mesmerized by the magnificent and miraculously munificent display of majesty—a matinée made for me?—when I mused to myself:

Ah, an elegant death.

Maybe what I meant, as the leaves languidly fell in larger and larger numbers around me, was an elegant dying. 

I imagined the trees, aware of their leaves' senescence, slowly sloughing them off in an ancient autumnal "Rite of Shedding," free from shame or any sour, sullen sadness. Perhaps with a pinch of pride.

And then I thought, "Who the fuck wants to die, proudly or otherwise?"

Well. 

Alas, I know that some do; I dare not judge. I might, however, quiver with wonder. I have indeed learned that there can be no living without dying. We who live and die are all sacred, hallowed by our even being to begin with. Are we not holy?

I marvel that I can yet be moved to this quintessential asking of questions. 

Meditation On Prayer

What is prayer?

Is prayer the corpus of statements, learned by rote in my childhood, spoken to a God up in heaven and in the name of Jesus and by the medium of the Holy Spirit?

Is prayer the emptying of my mind, so that I might become the receptacle of wisdoms passed down by sages across time, understood through the lens of my experience and made incarnate in my life through decisions I make and actions I take?

Is prayer sitting in a field on a warm day, soaking up the sun, smelling the blossoming flowers, tracking the flight of a shimmering hummingbird, and perhaps writing an inspired haiku? Or dancing with abandon, or shedding a tear in the theater, or a standing ovation after a grand symphony? How about reading a good book and reflecting on the themes it presents, and their potential impact on my life?

Is prayer being in a living sanctuary, surrounded by the inhale-exhale sing-shout of a community of people seeking to understand, or to be loved, or to make a difference?

Or is prayer the realization that I am not the center of the universe, the acme of space, the pinnacle of time, and that I am one small speck in the stream of all-that-is-was-and-will-be? Is prayer the contemplation of the significance of this reality? The striving to understand my brief role in the grand scheme of the drama of existence?

Is prayer silence? Is it speaking? Is it listening? Is it communication, back and forth? Is it an activity? Is it an experience? Is it a question, an answer, a method, a cause, a result?

Is this a prayer?

Amen.