Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Baruch 5:1

This season of the year---the early wintertide--with its waning light and holiday celebrations---is a difficult one for those who have sustained deep loss in their life. This time of year, it is particularly hard to take off the garment of sorrow and affliction. At Sunday evenings discussion with the adults on the issue of suicide, I read the passage that I also read on Sunday morning. It comes from Women's Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated. This collection of prayers and meditation is published by Morehouse Press. This particular selection is by the Rev. Barbara Deane Price who ministers in Alaska, where there are very high rates of substance abuse, child abuse, violence, suicide, and accidents.

Meditation on Untimely Death

It hasn't taken long for our leaves to turn from green to gold and then to fall and form the winter blanket for this good earth. I know Nina has been making moose head soup and that Eli's son has been cutting fish. I know that Kathleen is preparing for potlatch and threatens to make me smell porcupine while it's cooking. I know Edna is sewing beautiful items and most of us are doing autumn things, waiting for winter's rest.

Two years ago here, you'll remember, life was not so orderly. Two years ago, the snow fell heavily on yet-green leaves, bending the trees, burdening the branches. Things were out of order and the sight of leaves blowing across the snow was a strange sight all winter long.

Many of the bent trees managed to straighten, more or less, but are not quite the same. And some trees, of course, even in these two intervening years, haven't straightened at all and remain alive, but turned to the ground forever.

We are accustomed to a natural order of things, with seasons that follow each other in turn, with chores for each season, and beauty different to each season. We know what to do then; we know how to be summer people and how to be winter people.

But when the order is disrupted, we're uncomfortable, confused, not sure of what to do. Two years, ago, with snow on every green leaf, Judy said, "Oh, it will go away. It's too soon for winter." No, not that year. We just didn't have the time we expected to get things done. We went from summer to winter before the wood was all cut and stacked, before the freezer was full, before the boats were out of the water. We were caught unaware.

So, too, does death sometimes surprise us, coming too soon to be believed, coming to freeze the blossoms, fell saplings, remove beauty before its season. We feel this, I think, at the death of any child, for we never desire to outlive the next generation. It is out of the order of things. It is out of season.

The death of anyone out own age or younger nudges our awareness of our own end. Death by accident too is sudden, unreal, unsynchronized with our notion of the world. And when death is by choice, the impact of its suddenness, the unimaginable reasons, the implied insult of being so suddenly and cruelly left behind, is like that early killing frost, leaving petals in the ice.

With the dying of our fruitful harvest season, with the last of the fish, meat, and berries put by, with a sigh for a departing summer and yearning for a long-deserved winter rest, let us remember those too soon gone: the young, the victims of accidents, and the victims of their own sad terrors. Let us remember the losses of this year and of past years, our losses and those of others. I ask you to pray for them, rushed from us outside of the proper time and season.

And we, those left behind, whose only choice is to say farewell, unready and unarmed; we, who like those fragile birch, struggle to stand again, alive yet not as before, let us pray for one another. May we stand through another year of season, frost-damaged but steady and growing still.

May winter bring rest as faith brings peace.
AMEN.

In Christ's Love,