By now, from my vantage point in the American Midwest, the leaves are falling all the time.  Each day I see another tree barren, stripped of its chlorophyll, alone, its summer splendor gone.  Yet come spring, every tree will return, bursting with green once more. The land will live again.
     A few days ago, amidst these autumnal contemplations, I took some time to scatter my aunt Jeanne's ashes.  As you may recall, she passed away roughly a year ago, her life taken by cancer at the age of 85.  The trees by which I scattered them, colorful and plenteous when she and my wife stopped to paint them, had nearly vanished.  Only the limbs remained, bending and flexing in the breeze.
     I thought about how much Jeanne loved life, how much she loved my siblings and me, how much joy and wonder she brought into our lives.  And I thought about where she is today, secure in the eternity to which she so much looked forward.  I marveled at the astonishing fusion of ubiquity and temporality of which life consists, the gaping abysses and ground into which it seems so often to plunge:  the vexing puzzles and doors of existence.
     Before me this existence lived, manifesting itself in the final throes of autumn, teaching me, teaching us, teaching the planet about the rhythms and patterns of what is. We live, we bloom, we die.
     And enmeshed in the compass of eternity, we, like the land, we live again.