Behind every fallen leaf...

These fallen and frosted leaves are part of a much larger autumn scene: the birds flee, other animals burrow away, the ground seizes up, the plants don't grow and the trees are left bare. Maybe all of this loss causes us to be a bit more pensive this time of year. Loss is unavoidable. We understandably wish it were otherwise, but loss is part of living on this planet. Loss is like the ocean tide - it moves in and out of our lives. "Ebb and flow," we say.

Some losses are easily dealt with - we acknowledge them, maybe solve them, or simply move on past them. We lose a night's sleep, but have to function the next day. We lose keys, remotes, phones, wallets, and then we find them. We lose time with some distraction or pressing problem. We can lose our place in line or our place on a page. Loss is everywhere and everyday.

However, some losses are more serious, even life-threatening. The autumn trees (in our northern hemisphere anyway) now appear to be dead. But behind each of the fallen leaves there is the bud already in place and containing next April's leaf. Each miniature leaf will stay folded and safely tucked away against the winter blasts behind a hard shell. This closer autumn inspection might invite us to consider what's underneath or tucked away behind our own experience of  loss. 

I was recently talking with a friend who has just had a major cancer surgery and who today begins the chemo regimen that will take her through the holidays and into early March. After describing all of this she said, "But the blessings are falling like manna from the sky." She then spoke about the team of surgeons and doctors, the nurses, the people who are helping her to take care at home, the hospital pharmacists, house-keepers and technicians, her out-of-state adult children who call everyday, the presence of friends, the folks who promise prayers...

"But the blessings are falling like manna from the sky."

Gathering Manna in the Wilderness ~ German Bible ~1483

Saint Sergius of Moscow and the Monk Within Each of Us

St. Sergius of Radonezh by Mikhail Nesterov ~ 1890's

I was introduced to this painting of St. Sergius while visiting the State Museum at St. Petersburg in 1996. Here we see the holy saint at the top of a rise in late autumn. Look deeply and notice his monastery in the distance in the upper left hand corner. Perhaps the hills remind us of that hill country the pregnant Mary traveled to visit her elder cousin Elizabeth: God overcoming all the obstacles history placed to keep God from finding us in Christ. Here is a bio-paragraph about St. Sergius from the Anglican book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

At the age of twenty, Sergius and his brother began a life of seclusion in a nearby forest, from which developed the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, a center of revival of Russian Christianity. There Sergius remained for the rest of his life, refusing higher advancement.  

Sergius was simple and gentle in nature, mystical in temperament, and eager to ensure that his monks should serve the needs of their neighbors. He was able to inspire intense devotion to the faith. He died in 1392, and pilgrims still visit his shrine at the monastery of Zagorsk, which he founded in 1340. His feast day on the Russian calendar is September 25. 

In the painting we see the road leading from the monastery to the hilltop - we are all pilgrims on a spiritual path to find God who has found us long before. Sergius' left hand is placed over his heart, "Blessed are the clean of heart," Jesus teaches. The saint carries his prayer beads as well, to keep his prayer awake and focused. In his right hand he carries his abbot's staff, rather like a shepherd's crook. In the foreground there is a little conifer tree, an evergreen: That my prayer, like Sergius' prayer, might be ever-green, even through the personal times I might call dry or like a winter.

Wearing the tree bark shoes of a poor man, Sergius has stopped along the way making eye contact with each of us. He invites us to pay attention to the monk who is within each of us: to simplicity, silence, detachment, and the inner still-place where God can be detected. One abbot says: "The monk, standing outside his monastery, can tell what time it is by listening to the night insects." 

When the monk is having his silent breakfast, he isn't thinking about how to solve the monastery's money problems, or how to get foolish brother so-and-so to see things his way, he's just enjoying his tea and oatmeal. If he doesn't come to that attentive stillness, he won't endure.

We might spend some time with the painting of Sergius - long enough for him to speak a word of encouragement to us before he walks on. And below is a prayer from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, beautifully summarizing the essential theme of the saint's life, which we might make our own.

O God, 

by whose grace your servant Sergius of Moscow,

 kindled with the flame of your love, 

became a burning and a shining light  in  your Church: 

Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline,

 and walk before you as children of light;

 through Jesus Christ our Lord, 

who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

 one God, now and for ever. 

Amen.

Intercessions ~ Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Desecrated Torah Scrolls ~ Kristallnacht 1938

Pope Francis has led us in prayer this week:/ May we see citizens; not votes./ May we see migrants; not quotas,/ workers; not economic markers,/ the poor; not statistics,/ May we see faces; not abstractions./ We pray to the Lord.

Thursday is the Feast of the Lateran Basilica/ the Pope's church as Bishop of Rome./ We ask for the Church to be freed of so much reflecting upon its own divisions and problems/ and to be built up as an agent of dialogue in a divided world,/ solidarity,/ inclusion,/ reconciliation and human development./ We pray to the Lord.

Wednesday is the memorial of Kristallnacht/ the night which set in motion the Nazi elimination of Jews from Germany:/ murdering and injuring scores,/ destroying Jewish schools,/ synagogues,/ homes and businesses./ We pray for a world freed of Jewish hatred,/ and for the healing of memories./ We pray to the Lord.

Saturday is Veteran's Day,/ originally called Armistice Day/ marking the end of the First World War./ We pray for a peaceful world./ For veterans who are damaged physically,/ emotionally or spiritually./ We pray blessings for veterans' groups which advocate peace in our world./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for those who were injured in Tuesday's attack in New York City,/ and blessings for the police,/ investigators and rescuers./ We ask comfort for mourners,/ and new hearts for those who do evil,/ violent things./ We pray to the Lord.

With the turning back of clocks/ we begin to experience the winter's darkness./ May we discover something of the darkness within our own souls:/ the indifference to injustice,/ our settling for ignorance,/ and acceptance of the lies we are told./ We pray to the Lord.

*Sometimes I'm asked if I really believe God answers these weekly prayers for the Church and the world? I let God be God. All I care about is that God would see my heart awake before him, and that if nothing else changes on this planet, my heart does.