rustling

On my dining room table is a beautiful, red poinsettia plant nestled in a white bowl.  It is the very essence of Christmas.  But this morning I noticed one of it's leaves was wilted and  falling off.  The intense autumn colors have turned to crackling ground cover.  And last night's dusting of snow is now mud.  You don't have to work at hospice to be reminded that beauty is fleeting.


As I sit in patient's rooms I see pictures on their walls and tables of what they used to look like.  Miss Apple Festival whose toothless grin and scraggily hair bare no resemblance to her worn newspaper clippings.  A war hero sailor who now needs assistance to turn over.  A basketball coach who is no longer coordinated enough to feed himself.  The happy young couple who are now confined to separate halls. The attorney whose speech is now gibberish and the scientist who can no longer remember his own name.  Strong, beautiful, intelligent, driven people that age and disease have faded into shadows of themselves.


It makes me value my current mobility and independence.  And wonder what young picture of me will be chosen for my wall someday.  What future chaplain will be straining to make the connection.  And it makes me feel very sad.


And then I remember that with the fall comes the promise of spring.   My favorite C.S. Lewis quote reminds me of this.


At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.     The Weight of Glory