RFC considers blood and sacrifice.

I owe you something more, however -- something darker -- on the subject of meat: The minor leads inexorably to the monumental. Lamb has set our feet in a large room indeed. Man not only dines: he also kills and sacrifices. The room in which he relishes the animal orders lies between slaughterhouse and temple. There are death's heads at each end of the table of the world.

In The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection Robert Farrar Capon introduces what is perhaps the most poetic chapter with this paragraph. He explores our human proclivity to hunting and butchering and the Jewish temple sacrifices in a long poem that I mostly didn't have the patience for, though I liked its division into sections named for the categories of the car game:

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral;
Testing the textures of creation,
     savoring the styles of its coinherence.

After describing the neat and clean Mineral parts of our world, he moves on to the Vegetable, "the kingdom of seed, birth, life....And for the first time,/ the reek of death." But

Onions die quietly,
Cabbages shed no blood;
All plants forgive:
By the waters that comprise them
They wash man's hands
And let him walk away.

Eating vegetables is so innocent. But Capon doesn't want to ignore the reality of our place as carnivores, so he unapologetically moves on to the Animal kingdom

each man owning the honest interchange by which he steals his livelihood; each woman's hand intimate with the crack of wrung neck and severed spine....

It is not possible or even desirable to distill the writer's poem into a fully satisfying theology, but I wanted my readers to know that he does satisfy himself with the mysteries of God's plan of salvation, of which the temple sacrifices were a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

The world awaits
The unimaginable union
By which the Lion lifts Himself Lamb slain
And, Priest and Victim,
Brings
The City
Home.

Other posts in this series are:
RFC is the man we need.
RFC begins with the meat.

always looking for someone to devour

In a Valentine's Day e-mail letter, Touchstone Magazine editor James Kushiner comments on the news from Belgium. After the general greeting for the day, here is the rest of the letter:

...we live in time when the love of many has grown cold. How else to explain what has happened in the West? Most have heard that Belgium has passed a law allowing the 'euthanization' of children. With their kind permission, of course. We wish we did not have live in such times. But we do.

Many have seen such things coming, for decades. But warnings, debates, arguments have been to no avail. Books will continue to be written on why it has come to this and how to argue against the slide down the slippery slope (is there any doubt that this slide has been going on?).

Maybe it's time to recognize that one cannot argue rationally with a demonic spirit. In the United States, some 55,000,000 children in utero have been murdered under the inspiration of this spirit--over the past 41 years, a biblical generation of death in the wilderness. There is no Promised Land waiting for this unrepentant generation. We've been killing children without their permission already. Now, Belgium wants to kill adolescents if they are persuaded it would be better for them to go to sleep and never wake up.

I write to name this as the spirit of iniquity that it is. I am reminded of a scene in one of the greatest American films, The Night of the Hunter. Two young children, John and Pearl, are running for their lives from a deranged and murderous false preacher, Harry Powell (played by Robert Mitchum). Escaping down the Ohio River, the exhausted children spend part of a night in a barn, but they are awakened by the approaching sounds of Powell on horseback. John says to his sister, "Don't he ever sleep?" 

Exactly. The devil stalking in our midst is a ravenous adversary, always looking for someone to devour. He does not sleep. And his staunch ally, Molech, has devoured little children since biblical times.

The Lord Jesus Christ, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth belongs, has said, "Woe to them who cause these little ones to stumble. It would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened to his neck and be cast into the depths of the sea." Woe to the nation that does these things. One does not have to be a prophet to see this. God will not be mocked.

In the film, a courageous witness to the Lord delivers the children from death. She is a magnificent heroine, played by Lillian Gish. She loves truly, without fear, with courageous compassion. We must continue to shine the light, like the magnificent witness Valentine.

How long will the rocks of Berkeley last?

Berkeley Camellia in October

My sisters came to visit, and for the first time in about 50 years we returned together to places in Berkeley where we used to play. None of us has ever lived there, but as children we visited our maternal grandparents every summer.

Both of our parents had grown up in Berkeley, and last week we walked and drove the mostly hilly streets to find several of the houses in which our grandparents and our father and his sisters had lived. Of course we also stopped and stared at our other grandma's house, savoring the memories that had been born in us there.

Not far away is Indian Rock Park, of which you can see pictures in my post about the neighborhood where Grandma and Grandpa lived for half a century. Indian Rock is huge -- but not as big as we remembered it. And the park includes massive slabs and lava stones directly across the street, which I don't know if I've ever played on. We didn't go there this time, either, but climbed to the top of Indian Rock itself and sat a while, looking out over the tops of a thousand houses to San Francisco Bay.

Down Indian Rock Path

Not for very long, though, because we wanted to skip on down the steps of Indian Rock Path to Solano Avenue shops. Well, maybe not skip. But skipping is probably what we used to do!

Jade plant in bloom on the path

In our memories the excursion to the ice cream parlor took much longer than what we found this time, even though we have passed the age when one can be unconscious of one's legs and feet whether walking uphill or down. That shop has a new name, but the wares are similar, and you can look at old scoops while you wait.

After lunch, because we wanted to return to the higher neighborhood, it was necessary to hike up, and this time we took the steep route of Marin Avenue. Again my experience seemed altogether different from that of years ago, when most evenings after dinner Grandma, at an age greater than any of us have reached yet, would lead us on brisk neighborhood walks. It was slower than then. And the crucial person was missing.

Marin Avenue is a hike.

Mortar Rock steps

We circled back to Mortar Rock, just around the corner from Indian Rock, and wandered there longer, just as we used to play there longer in our childhoods. More of those stone surfaces are easily climbable, and Grandma always felt better about us going by ourselves, because we didn't have to cross a busy street to get there.

The houses next to these parks and paths don't have much privacy. In this picture you can see how close they are, and how there are not fences blocking them from park goers and their glances.

When I first put my feet on the dry paths of Mortar Rock Park, suddenly a familar herby smell registered in my senses, making me look down to see long pointy dead leaves underfoot, just as my mind was linking to "bay tree." I lifted my head and saw that the dappled shade was cast by at least two tall old California Bay Laurels (along with oaks and buckeye) whose several large trunks were curving high over the rocks.

And yes, there were the grinding mortars in the rock, empty of anything but leaves at this time of year. Do children still pretend to be Indians grinding acorns in them?

One of the houses we were searching for was only a few blocks from here, so we walked up the street, admiring the many flowers still in bloom in this mild climate. Banks of fuchsias always remind us of the long row of them that grew along the brick path in Grandma and Grandpa's back yard.

More rocks! This house, though modern in design, has a very traditional and unchanging boulder to distinguish its front yard.

This one's even more of a monolith. Having such a thing in your front yard would certainly lend drama to the landscaping. I wonder if the owners of the house are helped to keep a humble perspective on their lives, with the antiquity of their mineral friend constantly looming. So solid, and not going anywhere. 


Lots of giant volcanic rocks dot the neighborhood. I saw these I didn't remember on Santa Barbara Avenue, taking up a lot or two.

Rocks on Santa Barbara Ave., Berkeley CA

The weather was summery, and we seemed to walk always up, and up. It felt good to stop frequently to snap pictures of fall color or late summer flowers. Eventually we arrived at the first house of our father's on our list, on Santa Barbara Avenue.

Another childhood home of my father, on Euclid, has had a facelift recently -- we compared it with photos from 15 years ago when a patriarchal tree must have blocked the view and the warming sunlight, and the color was white. Paint and trees and even whole houses are easier to change or remove than those giant rocks.

Euclid house

And though it seems ages ago that we walked these streets together, and slept in the Berkeley bedroom wondering at the city lights spread out before us, most of these houses are not more than a hundred years old. Young things, really.

We went back to our car and drove to a few more houses, none so photogenic now. We bought gas at the station where our grandma used to buy hers, and we shopped at the market where she used to shop. We ate dinner at Spenger's Fish Grotto where we'd eaten many times with our grandparents. And then my dear sisters and I finished our day with shopping at our grandma's favorite Park & Shop market, now Andronico's.

But a little earlier in the evening we'd added to our tour a visit to the cemetery where both Grandma and Grandpa are buried. None of us had visited since the last graveside service almost 20 years ago, and it took some exploring to find the marker. I felt closer to Grandma and Grandpa there at their grave than I had on the street in front of their house.

Cemeteries are where one finds another sort of stone, markers of lives that grew up like grass, and withered and died, most with life spans briefer even than flimsy wooden houses and certainly shorter than those huge stones people built neighborhoods around fairly recently. At the end of time, we read in 2 Peter, "... the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."

Indian Rock and all the granite in the Sierras, though it's been around longer than we can imagine, will be gone, along with houses and gravestones. Then what is most enduring, the souls into whom God breathed life, will be raised. We are what on this earth is eternal.

We rejoice with the dead and scatter eggshells.

Grave with exuberant rockrose

Today is Radonitsa or The Day of Rejoicing, Tuesday of Thomas Week in the Russian tradition, though some Orthodox churches visit graves on Thomas Sunday. My parish doesn't have a churchyard (yet) so we don't have a gathering in the church with traditional foods, as is the Old-world custom. But several of us joined nuns from the nearby skete at a cemetery not far away and sang a service of remembrance, alternating with joyful Easter hymns. It was a warm day on a dry hill; the sun was toasting the weeds underfoot and making them smell like cookies in the oven.

The Resurrection icon at top shows several elements that signify the ramifications of Christ's rising from the dead, and every version shows in the center Christ pulling Adam and Eve from their tombs, from Hades. David and Solomon and Abel and John the Baptist and others are featured - we all are raised with Christ, as the church books explain:

Having previously celebrated the radiant feast of Christ's glorious Resurrection, the faithful commemorate the dead today with the pious intent to share the great joy of this Pascha feast with those who have departed this life in the hope of their own resurrection.

This is the same blessed joy with which the dead heard our Lord announce His victory over death when He descended into Hades, thus leading forth by the hand the righteous souls of the Old Covenant into Paradise. This is the same unhoped-for joy the Holy Myrrhbearing Women experienced when discovering the empty tomb and the undisturbed grave clothes. In addition, this is the same bright joy the Holy Apostles encountered in the Upper Room where Christ appeared though the doors were closed. In short, this feast is a kindred joy, to celebrate the luminous Resurrection with our Orthodox forefathers who have fallen asleep.

My own parish comes out of a Russian tradition (though we are presently mostly Americans without Russian ancestry, and part of The Orthodox Church in America.) So we keep this day, which even St. John Chrysostom mentions in the 4th century. After the short service we all walked around scattering eggshells on graves and calling those who have fallen asleep, "Christ is risen!"

Bridges and Streams

Great-grandparents

Last week was filled with historical talk and images - even theology. First there was the cemetery where we had buried my father-in-law in January. We checked to make sure that the gravestone had been cut and set properly, and then we visited the graves of Mr. Glad's great-grandparents and grandparents on both sides of the family, and several aunts and uncles.

At left is one set of the great-grandparents whose graves we visited, people born in Cornwall in the mid-19th century. They came to California to work in the New Almaden quicksilver (mercury) mines near San Jose, where the wife Eliza gave birth to my husband's grandmother and several other children.

When I look into the bright eyes of that face I just wish I could hug her. Why do you focus on her and not him, my husband asked? Because she's a woman and I'm a woman, I answered. I feel strangely connected to her across the years and in spite of the fact that I never knew her nor are we even related by blood. I wonder if she is praying for her descendants, including my children and grandchildren? I can't see and touch her right now, but (Matthew 22) "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." She is a real living person, not an idea.

New Almaden Englishtown

The novel Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner tells the story of a miner and his wife who lived for a time there in Englishtown, with tales involving Mexican miners in the camp's "Spanishtown." The Cornish people attended the Methodist Episcopal Church on the hill and Eliza is remembered as loving to read her Bible.

When her children were grown and the parents had moved into San Jose, she still prepared a large spread every Sunday afternoon and expected all the children and their families to come for Sunday dinner. She was especially fond of her grandsons.

Many of the women those days kept chickens and cows but Eliza was the only one in her family who had the gumption to kill a chicken. When any of the others wanted chicken for dinner they would take their bird to Eliza to chop off its head.

A mother and father not ours

On the first night of our trip to these forbears' old stomping grounds we had dinner with a dear cousin who also is linked and indebted to them. We came bearing gifts of photographs of some relations who have passed on, and we talked about our family -- and of course, our own childhoods.




Next day the Mister and I ate a picnic next to the Felton Covered Bridge in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's the tallest known covered bridge in the country, built of redwood in 1892 to span the San Lorenzo River. No one knows why the builders made it so high.

I started thinking about bridges as a metaphor, as in "Bridges to the Past"....What would be the thing to be bridged, the gulf over which we can meet on a bridge? If we are on this side of the bridge, what or who is on the other side?

burned redwoods at Henry Cowell

The bridge lies near the Mt. Hermon Christian conference center, where my husband from his earliest days enjoyed the creeks and paths and sleeping on the porch of his grandmother's cabin.

He and I spent our brief honeymoon in that cabin, and strolled dreamily around the redwoods of Henry Cowell park nearby. It was drizzling that day in March 41 years ago and we had the park to ourselves, no doubt breathing the same woodsy, cold and moist air that we drank up on this trip.

Our marriage has endured to the present; it's a continuing thing, so the bridge idea doesn't exactly fit in that case, but it was pressed back into my mind a few more times anyway.

 

Mr. Glad and "The Giant" redwood tree

Our Cabin in the old days

From the covered bridge and the park we drove up a hill to the neighborhood of the old cabin where we'd spent so many happy times with several generations sleeping in nooks and corners and beds tucked into closets. Another cousin and his wife live around the corner in a cabin that's been in his family for many decades, too.

We two couples walked up and down all over the place remembering the fun and family going back 60 years. Mr. Glad and I hadn't visited "his" cabin since 23 years ago it passed from our family. We saw that trees and ferns and birdbath have been taken away, to make space for parking trucks.












That's too bad. Well, let's keep going downhill toward the kind of landmarks that don't change so easily.

Two Cousins on New Swinging Bridge

The natural beauty endures - some of these redwood trees have been around for hundreds or thousands of years. The unnamed tall tree above looked to us as large as The Giant we had seen a few hours before in the state park. We were gazing up at it from the Swinging Bridge, a suspension bridge that still sways when you walk on it, though it has been improved from what it was in Mr. Glad's younger years.


Cabin Cousin named this scene "Stumphenge." People are always making structures and arrangements that are symbolic of the most meaningful things in their lives. Some of those structures, as I was to reminded the next morning, are intangible.

It's obvious I love a good bridge -- some of them are majestic works of art, and even the less dramatic show the human need and desire to go from here to there on the earth, to interact with the natural landscape in practical and artistic, and sometimes playful, ways.

I am often more comfortable on a sturdy bridge than I am down in the canyon or river below. Two creeks come together on the Mt. Hermon property. This confluence of Bean and Zayante Creeks is just about The Most Favorite Spot from the Mr. Glad history files. I have waded in the creek here too, with our children, and have sat picnicking on lovely warm summer days. We looked down from the swinging bridge and sighed our contented memories.

At this time of year we didn't want to be down there in the chilly water. From the bridge, wearing our cozy jackets, we could get a wide view. You feel that you know where you are, and there's no sand or pebbles scratching between your toes.

The next day as we drove home Mr. Glad and I listened to a discussion about a famous theologian who is now acknowledged to be a BRIDGE between East and West, Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals, and other disparate groupings. If I tell you his name many of you will feel an immediate urge to click away to another blog, because the Unitarians have done that to you.

When they controlled the educational system of this nation Unitarians worked hard to steer young people away from the Puritans, and one small tactic in this program was to inoculate them against a man who preached a lot on themes like humility, beauty, and the sweetness of the Love of God. They did this by making sure that schoolchildren had in their curriculum one of his worst and least representative sermons.

In our usual intellectually focused condition we search for these rational bridges to connect us to our roots and to each other. I'm afraid the Unitarians were trying to keep us on a platform without even a good view of the life-giving stream. If I stay in my mind and only think about God, it is like looking down from a bridge at the river, when what I am dying of thirst to do is splash and drink and be refreshed by the Living Water.

But in the presence of God, living our theology by prayer and love to one another, we can be part of a continuum, like the earthly water that over the millennia constantly comes back to us as rain into the streams and snow on the mountains, evaporates from the oceans to make clouds that float inland again....

If Jonathan Edwards and I both live in Christ, who said, "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you," then we are in the same vital current. And that's the important thing.

One of my dearest and most influential friends, Anne, gave me a copy of Edwards's Religious Affections more than twenty years ago, and I spent a while this morning becoming re-acquainted. But I don't think it's likely that I will read much more of the works of this brilliant thinker who is for some people a bridge. I already spend too much time standing on and studying bridges and platforms.

Instead I want to live in communion with God and with His people -- including my distant-but-near relations from the 19th century, the 18th century -- even the Holy Apostles, and all of that Cloud of Witnesses who (I Corinthians) "did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ."

San Lorenzo River

I see in the glass darkly.

When I married my husband, I married into his family. If that family were a building made of earthly stones, the large rock that for so long stood at the corner of the foundation, the one that bore the most weight, has been taken out of his place. He passed from this life last week at the age of 96. My husband's father was a Christian man and there was nothing fancy about him; still, many people said rightly that he was "a prince of a man."

The house is being restructured. We know that God's everlasting arms are under us in any case, but I feel the shifting, and the huge change. And I could not think of a thing to say here until today when I read these words from a hymn of the Greek Orthodox Rite for the Burial of Priests. This man who was so significant in my life was not a priest, or even Orthodox, but the hymn helps me to pray and to hold the mysteries in faith.

God intended the soul and body to be a unity, but at death they have to be torn apart. The words wonder about that and about other things regarding our death of which we understand so little. I like the musical setting by John Tavener; you can read the words below the link while you listen to the hymn.

And let us do as exhorted at the end, to enter into Christ, and His Light. Amen.

 

Why these bitter words of the dying, O brethren,
which they utter as they go hence?
I am parted from my brethren.
All my friends do I abandon, and go hence.
But whither I go, that understand I not,
neither what shall become of me yonder;
only God who hath summoned me knoweth.
But make commemoration of me with the song:
Alleluia.

But whither now go the souls?
How dwell they now together there?
This mystery have I desired to learn,
but none can impart aright.
Do they call to mind their own people, as we do them?
Or have they forgotten all those who mourn them
and make the song:
Alleluia.

We go forth on the path eternal,
and as condemned, with downcast faces,
present ourselves before the only God eternal.
Where then is comeliness? Where then is wealth?
Where then is the glory of this world?
There shall none of these things aid us,
but only to say oft the psalm:
Alleluia.

If thou hast shown mercy unto man, O man,
that same mercy shall be shown thee there;
and if on an orphan thou hast shown compassion,
the same shall there deliver thee from want,
If in this life the naked thou hast clothed,
the same shall give thee shelter there,
and sing the psalm:
Alleluia.

Youth and the beauty of the body
fade at the hour of death,
and the tongue then burneth fiercely,
and the parched throat is inflamed.
The beauty of the eyes is quenched then,
the comeliness of the face all altered,
the shapeliness of the neck destroyed;
and the other parts have become numb,
nor often say:
Alleluia.

With ecstasy are we inflamed if we but hear
that there is light eternal yonder;
that there is Paradise,
wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth.
Let us all, also, Enter into Christ,
that all we may cry aloud thus unto God:
Alleluia. 

He is the Resurrection and the Life

Athanasius - All the disciples despise death.

On this Sunday in the Orthodox Church we remember the Holy Forefathers, the faithful ancestors of Christ, many of whom are named in a long list in the services yesterday and today, men and women like David, Jael, Daniel, Rachel, Moses and Ruth....

The Land of the Living Icon at Chora

And the hymns sing of how they all, long since passed from this earthly existence, are even now "in the Land of the Living." Thomas Hopko in The Winter Pascha mentions a church near Constantinople where a huge mosaic of Christ is named: "The Land of the Living. "I found a photo of it (above).

I learned in the short account of the life of Athanasius at the beginning of his On the Incarnation that the last and worst persecution of Christians ended in Egypt in 311 A.D., when Athanasius was about fourteen. From the age of five he had lived with the constant threat of death, and with the ever-present reality of persecution of his friends and family. The behavior of the ungodly is irrational and inhuman, and tends to cause great pain and suffering, often unto death, not only of the innocent but also of the most Christ-like. As an adult the scenes and events of his childhood seem to be fresh in his mind when he writes:

A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by the present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the Saviour, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Saviour has raised his body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead.

I started composing this post about death and the saint's childhood before the horrific murders at a Connecticut school last week. I found the description Athanasius gives, of people bravely and even joyfully facing death daily, foreign to my 21st-century suburban self. But the topic turns out to be pertinent, and the recent stories of gutsy teachers in our own country inspiring -- especially when taken with the letter from our Archbishop Tikhon after that event:

"Concerning those who have fallen asleep, Saint Paul exhorts us not to "grieve even as others who have no hope" [1 Thessalonians 4:13]. And yet, herein he does not forbid us from grieving. Now is the time for us to weep, but we must weep with the firm hope that comes from our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. "Shed tears, but remain calm; weep modestly, and with fear of God," writes Saint John Chrysostom. And following this example, each of us must strive to transform our sorrow into prayer.

Just this week I was asked to tell one of my favorite Bible verses, one that readily comes to mind without effort. It is always this one, that speaks of our complete dependence on the Lord as our LIFE, whether living or dying. Our leaves will not wither, because Christ Himself is The Land of the Living.

But I am like a green olive tree 

in the house of God:

I trust in the mercy of God

for ever and ever. 

Psalm 52:8

St. Andrew and His Cross

Where we sang this morning

Happy St. Andrew's Day! I had the honor and joy of celebrating the feast in church this morning. Added to the usual liturgy and communion were prayers and song lifting up one of our dear elderly parishioners who died in the Lord early today. Now the memory of his repose will always be tied to this feast.

Andrew was the first of Jesus's disciples, and centuries ago became the patron saint of Scotland and other countries. I wore my tartan plaid skirt as I always do on November 30th, and this year I had a new purple Celtic scarf to wear, recently brought from Scotland by Pearl.
  
Some of you might remember that I wrote about this years ago; I'm sorry to say that while trying to repost those thoughts this morning I deleted them instead. Ah, well, it turns out to be a blessing, because the accident caused me to find that just today John Sanidopoulos has written a thorough history of how it happened that the Scots chose this saint for their patron, and his cross for their official national flag.


This form of cross is called a saltire and is linked to St. Andrew because he was crucified on a diagonal cross in the first century. I learned that the first use of the X-shaped symbol was on medieval soldiers' clothing, probably a white image on a black background. And today there are many Scottish nationalistic garments and items that hearken back to this design, like this belt buckle.


It was only in the last decade that Scotland made St. Andrew's Day an official bank holiday. The nation also has another flag you might be more familiar with, the Lion Rampant, the unofficial national flag that belongs to the kings and queens of Scottish history. And there is the Union Flag of the entire U.K. Time was, Scotland could not legally fly its official satire on its national holiday of St. Andrew, but that sorry situation has been rectified of late.

These national days and flags have been part of the cultural consciousness since the 14th century, a consciousness that naturally changes from generation to generation. The original and deeper meanings of this cross are probably lost in the background fog of the mind of the nation.  It is encouraging to think that even if they have largely forgotten him and their Christian heritage, St. Andrew continues to pray for the people of Scotland.

A sleeping place is blessed.

When our rector went to a nearby cemetery to bless a section designated for new gravesites, I was eager to go along and be among those praying and singing. A small group of us gathered at noon after a morning of rain. The light changed often as the clouds came between us and the thin autumn sunshine. The trees cast shadows in the middle of the day, and I never took off my fleece jacket.

Not long into the service three words, "quickly flowing life," pressed on my mind, referring to our earthly existence. It seemed the perfect time of year for this opportunity to turn our minds to death and corruption; I could see the vineyard across the street all in gold, and apples had fallen from trees all around the awning that had been set up for us.

Strangely enough, my husband was in another town not far away, attending the funeral of a Christian man. His body was put into the grave at about the time we were hearing the Gospel reading, about how Joseph of Arimathea took Christ's dead body and cared for it. Here is the account from the Gospel of John:

After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and when at death our souls are separated from our bodies it is right that they be laid in the earth to await the resurrection. Fr. Alexander Schmemann (in an article that is worth reading in its entirety) makes clear what is Christian faith as regards this event:

...it is with faith or unbelief, not simply in the “immortality of the soul,” but precisely in the Resurrection of Christ and in our “universal resurrection” at the end of time that all of Christianity “stands or falls,” as they say. If Christ did not rise, then the Gospel is the most horrible fraud of all. But if Christ did rise, then not only do all our pre-Christian representations and beliefs in the “immortality of the soul” change radically, but they simply fall away. 

.....

He alone arose from the dead, but He has destroyed our death, destroying its dominion, its despair, its finality. Christ does not promise us Nirvana or some sort of misty life beyond the grave, but the resurrection of life, a new heaven and a new earth, the joy of the universal resurrection. “The dead shall arise, and those in the tombs will sing for joy…” Christ in risen, and life abides, life lives… That is the meaning; that is the unending joy of this truly central and fundamental confirmation of the Symbol of Faith: “And the third day, He rose again according to the Scriptures.”

The soul won't be separated from the body forever, but for a time the body will be as asleep, while we anticipate our rising, when we will sing with joy at the final defeat of death. Until then, this spot on the earth would be as good as any for waiting.

When the service was over, we were invited to pick as many apples as we wanted from the trees, which I think were Golden Delicious. It didn't take me long to finish my apple. The service was less than an hour. In a couple of months there won't be any leaves left on the vines or the apple trees, and the years of each of us are quickly flowing.

Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.