Death Cult

Through a window, which was closed, I saw, and heard, the browning leaves of a tree, blowing in the wind: a recent radio programme mentioned a study on the music, the sound, which trees make, each one unique - the 'susuration of trees'. And this one too, in the autumn - like Eva Cassidy's song of 'Autumn Leaves' - her own life cut short, abruptly and too early; autumn coming too soon.

And this day too, was Remembrance Day. I was asked to lead a short ceremony to commemorate it - by a lady, M, who had two poems she wanted to read. But she was unable to come in the end, because she had to be admitted to hospital - her bloood pressure too high. A sadness that she whose idea it was, couldn't finally be there. Yet another sign of age, of ageing, and eventual death. The autumn bespeaks the cycle of birth, life and death. Appropriate for this ceremony, marking the passing of many, and praying for peace.

A strange rite, almost pagan, in its death-cult celebration of human sacrifice for nation. So, where the beauty? In this? Where the God? the nature recycling itself for another cycle, and te eventual hope of rebirth, the seasons changing.

But this natural phenomenon is a far cry from the violent interruption caused by the death and resurrection, which broke the inevitable fixedness of the normal order: of this life, this death, by the empty tomb, the earth quake, the resurrection of saints (in Matthew), the coming forward, into time, of the powers of the age to come, retrojected into the past, into our present. Not a nature religion, of daffodils, rabbits, and easter eggs; but rather a strange, eerie, intervention, disturbance, of this regular rhythmm, by the Wholly Other, and his aweful, eternal, everlasting, life.