The year matures... in a blaze of glory

These sandstone walls have experienced eons of seasons coming and going... their scars testify of the earth's magnificent physiology, and the clockwork of creation.

 

The Camp mausoleum ruins near Navasota, Texas. 

 

It's true. Each year starts like a frozen, barren field and then juice from the earth fills each bud with incredible energy and life.. an endless fountain of green, until that field resembles a veritable jungle...

 Stone walls built by the WPA on Cedar Creek as it runs through Downtown Navasota, Texas.

And then the green energy matures into a smorgasbord of rich warm colors... before it submits to the cold and what seems like death upon earth.

Cedar Creek in the fall.

But still there is underneath it all the promise of new life, so we can enjoy this beautiful time of the year, as summer matures and retires in a blaze of glory. We should be so lucky so as to pattern our lives after this cycle!

Sandstone fence around the old Brooks property, near Downtown Navasota.

I believe God planned it so, so that we would have some reassurance about the journey each of our souls must take.

The Center of the Universe: St Paul's Episcopal Church, Navasota, Texas.

I just read D. H. Lawrence's "The Ship of Death": A rebuttal

(You are free to go read all of it on your own.)

 

It is about autumn and the apples falling... and dying... rotting.

 

Dying to self and just plain dying... and preparing for that, as he was, in the last months of his life. Pretty depressing stuff...

 

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit

and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew

to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell

to one's own self, and find an exit

from the fallen self.

 

And it goes on.

 

It is about seeing some kind of awesome beauty in the relentless, unforgiving cycles of nature. And a kind of brooding warning. We are going to die... this is one true fact we know without a shadow of a doubt.

 

 

But I can't look at it as he did... that we have to spend much time "building," preparing our "ship of death"... Death is something that is the one thing in our life experience we need not worry about, it will have its way soon enough, with or without our cooperation.

 

Still, autumn seems to have that effect on those who study the titanic moods of the earth.... as we watch the whole hemisphere go into a dying act, in fact a cold, suspended slumber. Fruit falls, leaves congregate at your gate, animals scavenge for sustenance. For a moment we consider our own mortality, and brown leaves and dead grass rattle our confidence. And poets quake.

 

But we live on.

 

 

 

And that is the lesson. God wants us to know that, while the rest of the earth goes into death throes, we live on. We can watch dispassionately, knowing our fate is not in sync with these forces. We live because we are slated as children of God... to be...

 

Immortals.  

 

We are building, or neglecting in some cases, each of us, our individual Ships of Life!

 

 

That is what I am building!

 

 

As the Apostle Paul so insolently proclaimed, "Oh death, where is thy sting!"

 

 

Thank you Lord, my Shepherd, for the peace that knowing this gives your sheep.

 

Fleeting Autumn Beauty.

Fall fell and you better get out before the color is all gone. Or just stare at this. Cedar Creek runs right through Navasota, and once brought water and carried away refuse for the townspeople here. Back during the WPA days, they fortified its banks and made it a very utilitarian artery, and after 70 years, the old rock and concrete laid by local men, and supervised by the government have a charm all their own. And our trees... they make any place look good.