TOMORROW’S SUNDAY

Nature insists again that November inevitably brings a sense of things ending and dying. Nature has worked its way through the promise of spring, the high-point of summer, the gathering of autumn and has now packed its bags for the deadening feel of winter. The leaves scattered under our feet are a sad anthem for the decline of another year. It’s no coincidence that November is the time of the year when we in the church, especially remember our dead. Because November is a time for remembering. Memory sweeps up the scattered leaves of time and we forage through them to pick and choose the memories that satisfy us or trouble us: the places, the events and especially the people who have shaped and formed us and who drift into our consciousness at this time of the year. Walking along a road or driving a car or pottering around the house and suddenly the leaves of yesteryear blow into a heap in front of us and memory takes over. It’s natural to remember and it’s part of that nature to remember the dead because they are part of what we are. They have shaped us and formed us in ways it takes a lifetime to explore. We are what we are because of what they have been and memory forces us to pay attention. November is a time for remembering those who have gone, searching for a face in the mind’s eye, re-telling an almost forgotten story, dredging the memory to keep the focus on times and people fading into the distance. Our thoughts turn inevitably to our own departed loved ones and the discomforting approach of our own deaths. And we do this not just to echo the message that nature sends to us with the coming of Winter. We do it to put a shape on life: to remember, lest we forget. So we remember. And we remember with hope in our hearts. Hope in the promise of enteral life.