Message in the Leaves

Leaves' final color burst at the downhill edge of their lifecycle deliver a message from the Creator of us all. Don't fear the end, they seem to say. The yearly transformation of trees show us that there's beauty in change, even glory in death. In the same way that there could be no spring without winter, there can be no resurrection without death.

I've been thinking about death lately--the mystery rather than the macabre. For all our vast collective achievement, humanity still has not been able to permanently prevent our own end. Our mortality eventually catches up to all of us--no matter how indispensable we are, how accomplished, how needed. Death's inevitability is reason alone for humility. How can we, who cannot thwart the end of life, dare to say that this life is the end? How can we trust that our scientific method, that cannot find a solution to the most basic and universal aspect of the human condition, has all the answers to life's other pressing questions?

We stand continually in death's shadow. But that shadow can be more like the welcome shade of a tree in summer heat than a dark menace lurking on twilight street corners. If we accept that our time is limited, we can decide more wisely how to spend our short allotment. If we accept that there is only one Way to overcome death, we stop fearing the end and embrace the beginning and middle. Understanding death helps me appreciate life in all its simple grandeur, like the coral leaves waving starkly against a sharp blue autumn sky, telling me that life, even in death, goes on.