Hurtling towards the end of the year

There is a time, the Bible says, for every season. And as I turned over the calendars this morning - November! - it struck me how time flies, even if you're not having fun.

November already. It doesn't seem possible, since just a few days ago it seems we were all complaining about the heat. But now the fallen leaves are blanketing my front porch, and I can almost see the house of my neighbors to the rear of our property.

I love this time of year. I love the cooler weather, the riot of color, the heavier clothes, the holidays. I'm not much of a summer person (I don't have the figure for it), and I tend to wilt in the heat, but fall and winter bring out the homebody in me. The cooler weather encourages me to bake more, to spend more time in quiet activities like quilting and reading, to just be.

Time seems to slow down just a little in the Fall. Even though I know I'm going to blink and Christmas will be upon us, there is still a hint of "slow down, you're movin' too fast" in the air. Fall reminds us how very precious our time is. We only have a limited amount of time on this earth. We are barely a blip on the radar of time; an eyeblink in the grand scheme of things. Knowing this, however, we still want to make our mark on eternity. We want to be remembered after we're gone. We write books and journals; we do good deeds (or bad ones); we invent and create and discover. Most of us will be long forgotten after our bones are dust - that's just the way of it.

But some of us will live on. We will have invented something, or done something, or written something that will survive after we have passed over to whatever lies beyond this earth. We will be a Thomas Edison, an Alexander the Great, a Mother Teresa perhaps. Or a Mark Twain, a Mister Rogers, or a Jack the Ripper. Some of us will become household names that everyone knows, but the vast majority of us? Probably not. And I think it is not the thought of death that scares us so much as the thought that we won't be remembered. We all want to live on after our deaths.

I'm no different. I'm currently working on my 32nd journal. I write something in my journal almost every day. Future generations, should they care to read, will know what my life was like at this time in history. When I read the diary of Samuel Pepys, for example, I am struck by how similar in some ways our lives are to the way life was when he was alive. Human nature remains the same throughout history - we have the same loves, the same hates, the same ambitions. None of us want to be forgotten.

So, as we hurtle on towards the end of the Year of our Lord 2005, I would encourage you, as I encourage myself, to examine your life. Write down what makes you tick, what you think, how you feel. Speak of whom you love. If prosperity looks at the journal of your life, what will history make of how you lived it? Will history say, "ah, now there was an honorable person?" or "what a rogue!" We have a choice, you know.

Today is All Saints Day. Begun perhaps as early as the year 270, All Saints has commemorated the lives of those who professed faith in Christ and have entered into the joy of their Lord. In the early Middle Ages, Gregory Thaumaturgus refers to a festival of all martyrs, though he doesn't date it. Ephrem the Deacon mentions such an observance on May 13th, and John Chrysostom, who died in 407, says that a festival of All Saints was observed on the first Sunday after Pentecost in his time. The church remembers its own on All Saints.

There is a song in our hymnal for All Saints Day. The words are attributed to Lesbia Scott, born 1898, and the music to John Henry Hopkins (1861-1945). It goes like this:

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.

And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus' sake,
the whole of their good lives long.

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there's not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
there are hundreds of thousands still,
and the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will.

You can meet them in school,
or in lanes, or at sea,
in church or in trains
or in shops or at tea,

for the saints of God
are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

Have a wonderful Autumn season, everyone, and as we hurtle towards the end of the year I wish you much happiness and a blessed holiday season.

Love and Blessings, Phoenix