You are spectacular
It’s the time of falling leaves in Australia. Across the smallest continent in the world, leaves are littering the ground and gardeners are frantically raking them up even as more swirl and fall around them. The leaves are often regarded as a nuisance, but they carry an eternal message.
Some people are burdened with the concept of the Fall of Man, as much as gardeners are burdened with the annual Fall of Leaves.
The Fall of Man refers to the end of paradise, being cut off from God, banished to a life of struggle. There's to be no more plucking of sinfully juicy fruit from a forbidden tree. It’s time to break your back digging in the cold, hard ground.
The Fall of Leaves pictures brightly coloured, almost iridescent leaves releasing themselves from their stem and falling to skitter along the ground like tiny birds playing chasey with the wind.
The Fall of Man sounds terrible. The Fall of Leaves sounds wonderful.
But both processes are wonderful.
The Fall of Man and the Fall of Leaves are part of the process of life.
People learn nothing strolling naked in a garden with food close to hand and sunshine every day. Leaves that are meant to fall learn nothing if they insist on staying connected to their stem, stubbornly refusing to engage in the ups and downs of life.
Leaves are meant to fall. People are meant to fall.
Like a leaf, it’s when we’re on the way down that we discover another aspect of ourselves. Like a leaf, we change colour, dry up, get blown by forces beyond our control, settle quietly, then get figuratively picked up by a universal gardener and placed where we will do the most good after our ordeal.
Do not fear the act of falling.
A fall intimates a new path opening, a new perspective revealing itself.
Just like a scarlet leaf falling, at a deep, deep level that is almost beyond your comprehension, you are spectacular when you fall.
With love, Marlane