Even with electric lights and gas furnaces to buffer us, with November nature comes with a soulful reminder: all things will end.  The songbirds are gone and, apart from the oaks and the evergreens, so have most of the leaves.  There is a time for action and seedtime, and a time for harvest and rest.  Our ancestors saw this change in the seasons as a chance to look back and consider “the Big Picture.”  Deny it as we might, it’s a healthy thing to consider our mortality.  Today and tomorrow’s double feast of All Saints/All Souls are but the entrance to Christianity’s month-long corrective to our usual thoughtlessness about such matters.  Nature is dying back, and, someday, (gulp) so will I.

So I’m back to remind you that this is a great time to pull out old photo albums and reminisce … a great time to un-file your will and make sure it reads as you remember  … a great time to visit a cemetery and reconnect (if only by memory) with parents, grandparents, and old friends who have moved on.  It’s also a good time to head to the library and take out biography of someone noble or heroic  … so we might see that greatness really is possible.  It’s time for me to head to the library and browse through the 921 section.  I’d be pleased to bump into some of you there also taking the November biography challenge.

And I repeat my new addition to the list of possible November tasks: consider making some choices about how you’d like things to look when (notice, I didn’t say “if”) you die.  In the reading racks in the entrances you will find copies of a planning guide that a group of us put together to allow for that.  This process is not designed as a way to extend control over your family even from the grave, but as a last gift to them at will likely be a very stressful time … and as a way that your faith in Christ’s resurrection, and your hope in your own, will speak as clearly as it should.  For the next couiple of weekends (November 14/15 and 21/22), members of the group who helped with this project will meet after the Saturday night and Sunday morning liturgies with any folks who would like to receive a copy of the booklet and how to use it.  Happy November!