The leaf's perspective

Sermon

A number of years ago my family was suffering through a great many deaths, and since I had two very young children I always kept an eye out for children’s literature that dealt with the subject of death, or the afterlife, or heaven, or really anything that I thought would help me explain these difficult concepts to my children.

Let me first say, for those of you who might be in a similar position, that I was not terribly successful in this venture. It turns out that the majority of the sort of picture books that win Caldecott Medals and the like are really written for the adults who buy them – the children don’t seem to get them at all. My children much preferred books with pictures of trucks on them and one word on each page, which for me, a person who loves words, was just torture to read aloud – or they liked books that repeated the same thing over and over, like “Have you seen my cat? This is not my cat.” Which, again, would leave me wanting to tear my hair out by the follicles while they were at the same time squirming with delight over the idea that there are a number of different cats out there and wouldn’t it be fun to travel the world trying to find yours by saying the same thing over and over to strangers…I don’t know, I didn’t get it, but you can see where I’m going here.

My search for the perfect children’s book explaining death was thwarted, because the so called "children’s" literature that I liked was really for adults, and the real children’s books that my kids loved I didn’t get at all. The biggest example of this would be this book here, "The Next Place" -- has anyone heard of this? I highly recommend this book to adults who have questions about the afterlife or what happens after you die. I just want to warn you, your three year old will not understand it at all. Get it for the adults in your life; it’s very good. It will make you cry, though, so watch out.

This is all by way of introduction of today’s topic. One of the books I found – and I didn’t buy it, so my memory of the point of the book is shaky, and I apologize for that – one of the books was about a leaf on a tree, who lived with his family, who are also leaves ... you get the idea. I think this leaf’s name was Freddy or something like that. So Freddy has a great life on the branch through the summer but when fall comes, he notices the requisite changes in his family members and then suddenly one of them falls off the tree, drops onto the ground, and is no more. Freddy of course is horrified, and turns to his family members to find out what had happened to his, say, grandpa leaf. He is reassured that this is normal for leaves, that there is a time for being green and full and blowing breezily in the sun, and then there is a time for turning brown and falling off the tree – a time for dying – but it’s all part of life’s plan, and although we are sad and miss the leaves that fall, we take comfort in knowing that it’s all normal and the proper way of the world.

I don’t remember if Freddy asked the follow up question that any human child would ask – when do I turn brown and fall off the tree – or how that was handled, but my admittedly faulty memory has it that Freddy is adequately reassured; he learned his lesson and was at peace with it. Which is a nice goal: Learn the truth of life – that we are born into a world that we love and we must at some point leave it – and be at peace with that knowledge. It’s sort of a beautiful, zen sort of goal. But I would like to argue, today, that this is not the leaf’s perspective.

This is the leaf’s perspective: The leaf is born, green and fresh. He enjoys the sun and the rain and the wind. He doesn’t see how obvious his fate is. The leaf wouldn’t want to see his leaf brother eaten by moths, or his leaf neighbors snapped off the branch for an art project, or the leaf town next door sawed off because some human kept hitting his head on it, or his leaf mother repeatedly slapped by a jumping child with a long stick. The leaf community would call these things horrible tragedies. Come fall, the leaf doesn’t want to fade away, even in a blaze of glory. The leaf does not want to learn the words to that song "Circle of Life," from the Lion King. The leaf doesn’t know or care that the tree is still alive long after he falls to the ground. All the leaf knows is summer sun and rain, and I bet that leaf does not want to die.

So to my mind, Freddy’s story is faulty, because in the real world, Freddy would be like us – resistant to the whole idea of death, not quite believing, despite all evidence, that such a thing is "natural" or "meant to be" in the world to which we are so attached. Freddy, like us, would grieve and pine at the loss of those he loves.

But we humans have received a gift, because we understand the purpose of Freddy’s life better than he does. We know quite well that leaves and branches fall off the tree each year, and although the tree looks entirely dead, and parts of it like leaves are dead, the tree is not actually dead at all. The tree will come alive again in the Spring, and new leaves will come, not the same leaves but really, just as good as the old ones. So the human perspective here is that the leaf is not a great loss, because the tree lives on. Again, this is NOT the leaf’s perspective. The leaf is still bound up with looking at his own little life.

Let’s think about what would help the leaf feel better about his fate. Maybe the leaf would be happiest if he stayed young and green as long as possible, longer than any of the other leaves. Well, we from the human side know that this is not going to save the leaf.

Maybe the leaf would have the happiest life if each of his days were leaf-perfect, alternating sun and a gentle rain, or if he started out life with a cool spring followed by a warm summer, with starry nights cuddling his friends and family nestled close? This leaf-life might make the leaf happy, but only if he is really good at appreciating the moment, because what a perfect leaf-life doesn’t do is solve the problem, which is that every leaf-life must end.

The only way I can see to make the leaf feel better is for the leaf to know about the tree, to be like us humans, because we know that leaves can wither and die again and again and yet the tree remains, the tree is unaffected, and the tree is what is most important. To us, the tree is the most important. To the leaf, the leaf is the most important.

It is obvious, I hope, that I am drawing out a pretty extended metaphor between us humans and Freddy the leaf. Some of you will be greatly relieved to hear that we will now depart from this metaphor a bit and talk more about us, and I appreciate your patience. I want first to make the point that this sermon is meant to help us ask questions about our place in the world and in history, not to answer those questions. It would be far too easy to conclude here by saying something like: "You know there’s more going on in the universe than just your little leaf-life, so stop being so fussy about your issues and your wants and think bigger! Get over yourself! Can’t you see how short-sighted Freddy is being?"

This is NOT the lesson for today. We are born into our leaf-lives for a reason – we are attached to our family and neighbor leaves for a reason – we don’t want these lives hurt or ended for a reason. It is my belief that the love that we feel for one another, the love that leads to this painful attachment and grief over loss, is actually part and parcel of the grace and mystery too, and can’t be easily avoided. So I guess the question I go back to is how do we make ourselves feel better about these somewhat stunted lives we have been given.

The question I would ask is this: What in our lives is the tree? How can we better see this tree? Because we leaves can live a full and glorious life in perfect weather and conditions or a short, miserable, brown edged life under more stress and strain than we think we can bear, but the truth is that the tree remains and is largely unaffected. What is our tree?

Some of you know exactly what your tree is. Some of you think this is a mind bending trick, like in fifth grade when you wonder "what if all we know as reality is actually just someone else’s dream." But wondering about what larger entity we’re a part of, what entity continues on when we are gone, is one of the most critical questions we can ask ourselves, if only because when we find our own true and authentic answer then we can finally find some true and authentic peace. Imagine the change in Freddy, if he understood his part in the larger glorious life of the tree, or his even greater part in the ebb and flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our environment, or the even greater, unknown even-to-us role that our earth’s atmosphere plays in the universe. Freddy’s life could be an important part of the whole thing, only he doesn’t know. If he knew all this, would he be less saddened by his eventual demise? I don’t know. But imagine his joy. Imagine his pride. Would a measure of peace follow? I think so. I think it must be so.

I have to admit, as most of you already know, that I am not very experienced at writing sermons. Writing this sermon was especially hard, in fact, because half way through it I discovered that I was not wise enough to finish it. I don’t have a universal answer for if there is a tree for us or not, or what that tree might be, or who would know about it. I can only ask the question, and follow my own innate sense that human beings may well be on this earth serving some greater purpose or even good of which we might be entirely unaware. What is this good or purpose? I don’t know the answer to that either. The only answer that I can offer you is to the question "why bother asking about the meaning of life at all?"

The first is my personal answer: that the closer I get to what Rev. Paige Getty calls "the God of my heart," the more at peace I feel about the leafy lives that we humans lead. So I invite you also to look for the Gods of your hearts – and you don’t have to call it God, for sure, but I hope you’ll call it Love, because that is what you’ll find there, I promise you. The second answer I have is actually the answer of Wendell Berry, whose poem I offer you as a closing comment. It is entitled "The Wisdom to Survive":

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
To stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place,
Renewing it, enriching it,
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
Asking not too much of earth or of heaven,
Then a long time after we are dead
The lives our lives prepare will live here
Their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides
Fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear,
As we will never know it,
And over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be green meadows,
Stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest,
An old forest will stand,
Its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground.
They will take nothing from the ground they will not return,
Whatever the grief at parting.
Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove,
And memory will grow into legend,
Legend into song,
Song into sacrament.
The abundance of this place,
The songs of its people and its birds,
Will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.
This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.

AMEN.