The sun rose this morning like a god.  The air was tinged with frost.  The first frost is late in the season.  I felt relief at this awaited sign of seasonal change.  Is not frost, the cold an ascetic exercise in paring of life, a reduction to the essence of things? And what does that amount to? What qualifies to be on the “short list” of what I love, what I cherish most?  When the distractions, the amusements, the color is banished, — what is left in black and white? 

The white frost forces an interlude to the growth of spring, a terminus to the fruitfulness of summer…

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Yesterday, Sunday October 31st, was the official day for children to celebrate Halloween.  Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve originates from the liturgical year, when the dead, especially the saints are remembered.  It is also a harvest festival, with bonfires, apple bobbing, and pranks. 

How can we not pause to remember, to recognize that death is the ultimate transformation?  Sure there are gouls, gobblins, haunted houses and scary stories.  Death is a terminus of one mode of being, the transformation of the entirety of a-life-lived, our endowment to the heritage common to us all.  Harvest time is the time to remember the dead…

These photos are of family members who participated with dozens of other children in the trick-or-treat custom in the neighborhood.  I remember the courage required, to walk up to the front door of a residence, to knock and wait — until a smiling adult answers the door.  The reward: a treat is offered in appreciation for the visual delight of the costume, and for the courage displayed by the costumed child.  The Lion family is shown with an almost two year old “cub.”  She walked by herself under the watchful eye of parents to a number of doors to receive her treats.  The mummy and the witch are older grandchildren, veterans of the custom of “dressing up” to walk the neighborhood and collect their trove of treats.

Courage!  Strength of spirit for living well, for dying well…

Dress up and celebrate the metamorphosis !

Now this from T. S. Eliot:

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

— Excerpt, East Coker