There's a world of blessings in the falling leaves

Things My Father Taught Me
by Mary Regina Morrell

There's a world of blessings in the falling leaves

"A world of wishes at your command, God and his angels close at hand, friends and family, their love impart, and Irish blessings in your heart!"

Often it takes someone we don't even know to remind us of the blessings in our lives. Take, for example, a friend of mine who recently journeyed back to New Jersey from Omaha, Nebraska. Traveling on the plane with her were 40 senior citizens. Their destination? Vermont, to see the glorious foliage of fall leaves.

Being born and raised in upstate New York where the changing colors of fall leaves is common place, I was amazed that such a large group of people would spend that much money to board a plane, one with a stop-over in Newark no less, just to see the leaves that most of us dread raking for a good part of the season.

Apparently trees are not in abundance in Nebraska.

Another friend, who rarely misses the blessing in anything, shared the story of the time she sent a large box of fall leaves to her son who was living on one of the Virign Islands. Her husband, not knowing what was in the box, paid a hefty sum for shipping to ensure its safe arrival. He probably wouldn't have appreciated the fact that he was paying to send dead leaves hundreds of miles when the wind would have done almost the same for free - that is unless he had seen the joy on the faces of the children who danced and jumped through those leaves scattered on a lawn under the Caribbean sun.

Fall foliage is not in abundance on the Virgin Islands either.

Just yesterday while attending a peace conference located on a heavily wooded hilltop, I snuck away from the group to wander through the woods alone. The smells of autumn amid the trees, the cracking and crunching of leaves under my feet, the crisp breeze across my face and even the protruding expanse of rock that served as a handy seat drew me into a memory of other times, of friends and laughter and dreams shared and I realized again how often we take our blessings for granted -- the gifts of beauty and wonder that God lavishes on us daily, the simple gift of freedom to walk under a canopy of painted leaves amid the chatter of busy squirrels, eyes with which to see a rosy sun turn the sky purple and pink behind a backdrop of shadowed trees, a heart open to love for it all. But the sad truth, as the Italian poet Trissino wrote so simply, is that too often, "Blessings are not known till they be lost." And when those blessings be friends, the loss is greater still.

My short time in the woods reminded me again of a lovely Irish blessing my father had hanging in his den. The Irish, he would tell me, are well known for their love of the simple blessings of God which is why their charming words hang in so many homes, even those that were only half Irish, like mine. The words of the blessing were these: "May you have food and raiment, a soft pillow for your head, may you be forty years in heaven, before the devil knows you're dead!"

Well, my father taught me that a sense of humor is one of the greatest blessings of all, and if we lose that, it's as good as being dead!

Beannacht!

______________________________

Mary Regina Morrell is a syndicated columnist, author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press, and four reflection journals available through the Metuchen Office of Religious Education.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Regina Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562-1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

Blessings

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