Last week, as part of our autumnal acknowledgements and observances, my wife and I bought a corn stalk.  We posted it in the entryway of our home, reminding us, and all who enter our home, that change is afoot, that the earth is turning, that life is shifting.  That the world is framed in a nearly eternal rhythm of light, life, darkness, and death.

    That's the point.  With its diminishing daylight and crisper nights, autumn is about light as much as it is about dark, telling us that we need both to make a meaningful world.  That although life is wonderful and amazing, it will always end, for that, too, is the essential pattern of existence.  And that's fine:  our destiny is ultimately transcendent.

    Early one morning last week, I saw Orion, striding across the southeastern sky.  It's a glorious sight.  Orion's massive frame looms over the other constellations, dominating the autumn and winter skies.  It speaks of strength, marvel, majesty.  More significantly, it tells a story, a story of how life is perfectly undone:  we live in a magnificent shadow of what is to come.

    The corn stalk is only the beginning.