I.
Memento Mori.
Remember Death.
This is our task as humans,
and as Christians.
At all times and seasons
in all bodies and creatures
within every ecosystem and biome
we are dying.
On Earth
Death is a way of Life.
First inhale, then exhale.
This is both Life and Death.
First eat, then…excrete.
This is both Life and Death.
In baptism’s waters,
my old man of sin dies
as I, a new man of life, lives.
I am buried in Death
and raised in Life.
In the baptism of Spring’s soil
the old oak’s acorn dies
as a new sapling of green lives.
Acorn is planted in Death
and sprouted in Life.
II.
Death is a way of letting go.
Life is a way of holding on, albeit loosely.
In the senescence of Autumn’s cool
nature teaches us to let go
of warmth,
of green leaves
of days at the lake
and easy stargazing.
On this, Halloween, the dead’s day
we are to practice cultural Momento Mori
remembering our cultural dead.
Over 700,000 of them.
III.
On Earth life is a way of death.
As creatures, we live
only by the death of other creatures.
As creatures, we are only alive
because our ancestors lived before.
We are the mortal descendants of
Fathers and Mothers.
Grandfathers and grandmothers.
Australopithecine and Neanderthal.
Amoeba and single-celled primordial
ancestors.
Can we expand our family trees
to include our ancestral trees?
Can we consider stars and nebulae
as the wombs of our first inhabitance?
The Cosmos as Kin?
IV.
By God’s wild design
Death and Life dance ever closely.
The waking moment, a breaking
wave of Life and Death.
Droplets of entropic beauty skittering
along the surface of this
wild momentous cosmos.