Life and Death of a Simple Leaf

I just watched a single leaf fall from a tree outside.  It is autumn, we saw temperatures in the 30s last night, it was beautifully brisk.  That leaf has done its job since late spring.  The bud showed itself sometime as the last icy patches were receding.  The yearly tiny glaciers that give rise to a new short age.  The shoot pushed out of the branch, arcing toward the sunshine, toward the source of the light.  Soon after Pascha, the full young leaf revealed its inherent splendor. Still smaller than its potential. I have heard in many nature documentaries that the deer love young leaves the most.  So being young was risky, but necessary.  As we all tumbled through the end of the school year, or to the early days of outdoor life reawakened, that leaf reached its full stature.  Broad, green, its lines placed there by the finger of God Himself.  We didn’t notice.  That leaf became one of thousands on one tree in a stand of thousands of trees in a town that is more green than anything else. It offered shade to the world below, it fed us the air we breathe.  It worked in concert with its elevated neighbors in a fragile yet powerful system.  The canopy above us, that is the sky, is unreachable by our tiny selves.  So the Lord put the canopy a little lower so that we might know that His loving care is also reachable, and condescends to meet us and provide in our need.  The leaf was a part of that plan.

And just now, as fall is establishing, a new time for that leaf has come.  The sacrifice.  The death.  Untimed, and only predictable by the experts, that leaf has fallen.  A few weeks ago the beauty of the green receded and yellow and brown appeared.  These colors mark the end of the elevated life of that simple leaf.  In the oldest areas of our nation, people take trips to see the changing of the leaves. Foliage tours are big business in some small New England towns.  Monetizing the change of the seasons.  But no individual leaf cares.  It’s irrelevant to them.  Their cycle is ending, though images of their time above the dirt may persist in a postcard or medical supply advertisement. Faded colors, losing its suppleness, drying out, dropping.  But its gifts to the world are only beginning.  The hold on the branch is slackening.  At a time known to none but the creator, by means that are completely mystical, the time will come.  The hold on the wood that held that leaf will give way.  Some tumble and twirl with fierce speed to the  earth.  Some take a twig with them and plummet more quickly.  Some are completely unwitnessed.  The one I saw today was graceful.  From somewhere outside my vision, this old leaf curled in on its side and gently glided to the ground.  A smooth motion from its perch, one line directly to the earth.  No flailing. This beautiful leaf went to the ground without a whimper, without a crash, but dutifully.  To new life, a sacrificial life.  

 From the creation, through the ice age, and the early empires, death was the end of it all.  Springing from our family histories, scratching around on a piece of ground in our hometowns until we are eventually returned to the depths.  Then, death was the end of the story.  But the philosophers looked at the firmament and knew there was something to come.  The druids measured the heavens and saw a hope in the new rising. Israelites came out of Ur, out of Egypt hoping for the rising of the Lord.  And every one of them preceded our leaf to the dust.  The dirt below our feet is the decaying matter that once graced the majestical roof.  Our exalted leaf now joins the generations immemorial in coating the earth.  The decay giving way to the nutrient bearing fields.  The ultimate act of sacrifice is ensuring that the leaves to come, the priests and people, each are well fed.  From the ground springs our sustenance.  Sustenance comes from the tiny leaf, once a tiny bud, itself springing from a tree from the earth.  This is hope.  There is something after the death that promises new life.  A life fulfilled by being radiant with a joy that is beyond the simple arithmetic of the value of one leaf.

An hour ago, a leaf fell.  It will offer soil to feed a generation that will not remember me.  That leaf is an emblem of love.  Love that grows through the gift of its life.  Love that cares about the other even unto a sacrifice of the self.  Through that sacrifice, resurrection is uncovered as the true power in this world.  The Creator gives, blesses and honors his smallest leaf and greatest emperor with a new leaf even greater than can be conceived.