There is a yellow on the tree outside my office window that greets me each day.

Through the fall I have watched it burst into color and now the rain (will it EVER end?) and the wind are dispersing the color to a carpet around its base.

There is melancholy in this falling. I’m aware of the power of season and cycle as I bear witness to the tree and its release of leaves.

At this time of year it calls my heart to pay attention to the witness we call All Saint’s Day.

On Sunday the 1st of November we will welcome into the consciousness of our communal hearts the twenty of our church folk who have died in the past year.

Through the naming and the seeing of their faces projected on the screen and through the ingathering of their people joining us in this ritual of thanksgiving, we remember.  We give thanks and we laugh and we hear the echo of their voices and feel the power of their spirits and we mark the changing of the season that is life.

Their witness and teaching create a colorful carpet around us and while we mourn the change in relationship since their release of earthly being, we give thanks for the color and presence that blesses us yet.

We are all falling into the cycle and power and release that is living.

Sometimes we even stop to remember our being in the midst of it.

I met Leah 25 years ago today.

In a hospital room in Stevens Point, WI I learned what wonder was. 

Wonder was struggling out of the fog of an emergency Cesarian section and being fearful about asking after the health of the child who had been constant companion for ten months and being answered by the handing into my arms a bundle capped by blond fluff and eyes bespeaking a soul old and fine.  Her eyes found mine  and there was an “of course” as we took each other in, as if to say we had been destined to learn love and life one from the other.  Of course.  Of course.

Wonder. 

She is far from my arms on this day, making and learning her life.  It aches, this not holding her on this day of remembering and celebrating.

But the world holds her.  She is, and she is so fine, and of course she will venture and learn and explore while her mother marks the day remembering.  Remembering the communion of soul-meet.  Remembering the advent of wonder.