The Mystery of Loss

A friend died yesterday. She loved the Earth and the seasonal festivals. Today we go to the Order’s Samhain camp. The leaves here in southern England are now in their full Autumn colours. All this prompted me to paste thoughts on death, loss and autumn leaves on the Order’s Facebook page, and I’ll post them here too, along with a photo I found on Wikimedia which shows leaves displayed on the eightfold wheel of the year. I’ve rotated the image from the original, so that the autumn leaves are in the North-West, in the place of Samhain:

Falling autumn leaves teach us of the beauty of endings, of the bright flame of passion that doesn’t die but is reborn when life is transformed. The death of our bodies, relationships, dreams and hopes can all feel deeply sad, and rightly so, for suffering is as real as joy, and loss is painful. But hidden within the darkness of loss lies a mystery, and although that mystery will always foil our attempts to understand it with our minds, Nature will sometimes offer us a clue as if to say: There! Can you see it in the brightness of these leaves?