“When I look at the work of your hands . . . what am I that You are mindful of me?”  Psalm 8

“Between every two Aspen trees is a doorway to a new world.”  John Muir

Fall has come to the Rocky Mountains; The days are getting shorter, temps are going lower, bears are desperately seeking their last morsels to eat (I had one in my truck last week), and most importantly, the Aspen are changing.

While they don’t compare to the Fall foliage in places like the Northeast or Wisconsin, the Aspen leaves, imitating gold dollar coins that are quaking and shaking and shimmering in the gentle breeze are nonetheless glorious.  Countless numbers of tourists drive to this part of the world to behold their simple, natural, God-given beauty.  I am fortunate, as I only need step out my door to see them in their radiant splendor, reflecting the Glory of the Lord.

Yesterday afternoon I took the short walk from my house into Rocky Mountain National Park to soak up the splendor.  I experienced what Muir describes.  As I sat at the base of The Grandmother Tree, purported to be one of the oldest pines in the park, pondering this natural beauty, it occurred to me that the reason the Aspen leaves are so beautiful is because they are dying.  They are Fall-Ing, literally, to the ground.  There to be buried by mounds of snow and to do their work of feeding and fertilizing the soil that will give life to bushes, trees, and all types of flora.  The beauty of death which gives life.  That was an epiphany for me. 

Previously in my personal and professional life I have struggled with death.  I have not seen it as beautiful.  I have seen too many deaths, presided over too many funerals, done too much grieving, both by myself and with others.  I have seen death as terrible, tragic, yes, even terrifying.  Death for me has been an uninvited and unwelcomed guest, who rudely interrupts this party called “Life”, only to leave sadness, suffering, and sorrow in its wake.

But looking at those Aspen made me think a bit differently.  It made me wonder how death could reflect beauty.  How the process of dying, rather than being feared or fought, could be transposed, translated, transformed into something resplendent; something that reflects the heavenly beauty of creation.  After all, that is what I am; that is what you are.  Part of God’s creation.  An important part.  One individual, yes.  But like those individual Aspen whose roots are connected with one another forming one united, living organism, so too are you.  So too am I.  We are connected not only with the earth which feeds and fertilizes, but with The Light, the eternal Light, the Heavenly Light that works in us a uniquely magical form of photosynthesis, changing us, shaping us into the people God intends us to be.  Giving us the fuel and the faith to live this life fully, and then, having passed through the seasons of our lives, providing us with the means by which to die, to fall into the earth, with the grace and beauty that is but a small reflection of the One that is the Author and Artist of this life.

It is a process to come to this place of not just accepting death, but embracing it.  A process that requires small steps, like hiking back into The Park.  My trek yesterday afternoon to take in the splendor of the Aspen helped me a bit.  But I’m not there yet—not yet fully embracing the beauty that can be found in death and resurrection—but I am on The Way.