Nature: My Gentle Teacher

My thoughts have been swirling like dry leaves in an autumn gale. The play. My job. My friends. My Self. It's all too much, Ms J. I get over-whelmed at times. I can't do it all. Everyone hurts. Everyone needs help. So much sadness around me.

Worry.

Tears.

Anger.

Fear. Mine. And theirs.

This morning, on my way back to the yard, I encountered a red signal and stopped my train atop the bridge that spans little Mimico Creek. Normally, there's not much more than a trickle of water there, but we've had a lot of rain lately. A lot. So the creek is more like a river. The water has a noticeable current and from the short wooden bridge, it's only a few hundred yards to the lake. Lake Ontario.

As I gazed along the ravine, there came a gust of wind and thousands of bright yellow leaves were suddenly, helplessly airborne. I watched as the wind held them aloft for a moment before setting them gently down. Many of them landed in the muddy creek where the flowing stream whisked them silently away to an unknown fate.

"They don't seem concerned at all," I thought. "Those little yellow blighters are completely helpless against the will of nature, but they seem to accept their fate so placidly. They can't possibly know where they're being taken. They haven't a clue what will happen to them. They don't know that they're on their way to a Great Lake where their decaying bodies will provide oxygen and nutrients to allow other Life forms to flourish. Life forms they cannot even imagine."

I smiled as the leaves rode some ripples and then danced nimbly around moss-covered rocks.

"They're not fighting this," I marveled quietly to myself. "They're actually enjoying the ride!"

And suddenly, Ms J, I was visited by a kind of quiet calm. I felt my face relax and my shoulders drop. I was aware of my breath which came in and out in a slow, steady rhythm. The rhythm of Life itself.

I can be a leaf. Be leaf. A beleafer. A single fat tear found my cheek and tickled as it slid down.

I don't know what will happen with my job. I'm not sure how things will go with this play I'm doing. No one can predict what will become of Nick or Allan. Or Dave and Pat Loner. Or my sister, Helen.

But I know this: We're all leaves, fragile and finite, in the great river of Time. Our ultimate destination and our final fate are both obscured. But if we can just find a way to relax and enjoy the ride, Ms J ... If we can only imagine that we each have a tiny but important role to fulfill in some great, grand scheme ...

Well then, there's hope isn't there? Hoping and waiting, Ms J. Remember?

And as I wrote in my sermon last summer, "It's the hoping that makes the waiting bearable."

Amen.

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