CourierNews - Chicago
In the eighteenth century, Charles Wesley wrote a hymn known as Earth and All Stars.
The second verse is a stirring tribute to the extremes of the elements and nature. One line in particular, "Flowers and trees! Loud rustling dry leaves!" is especially appropriate at this season. We can all identify with it.
After all, it's autumn! What is more common in this part of the country than loud rustling dry leaves?
We kick those leaves out of the way, rake them, heap them into compost piles, bag them (in special bags, yet!), or, if we are particularly fortunate, burn them, relishing the aroma of the sacrificial smoke as it wends its way heavenward.
A lot of symbolism and memories are bundled with those colorful remnants of the greenness of summer, symbolic ever since God created autumn.
...Whatever faith we proclaim, whatever we hold sacred (and everyone holds something sacred), we are symbolic creatures. Burning leaves for the garden is a ritual of autumn. It is one thing to ban an event; quite another to ban a ritual, as the early church discovered. That is why so many symbols seemingly out of place in Christian worship are there: as transitional motifs from our symbolic nature into the divine.
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