There is leave taking with the coming of each new day. As we wake we let go of the dreams or nightmares that plagued our sleep. We leave behind what was unfinished yesterday and either forget it or add it to the hopes of the hours to come. We take our leave of one day on the calendar, turn to the next, hope for the best. Even though it seems unbelievable to me, I have been told our bodies, every day, leave behind some of our sloughed off skin and our cells make something new of their old form. We are created to be leave-taking creatures.

I am surrounded by passages, by leave taking, these days. Some dear ones who grace my life are making their way from this place near me to other places miles away. My heart will need to stretch mightily to hold this, to continue to feel their connection. Leave taking. Some friends have recently lost their aged parents changing the shape of a life they have always known. Leave taking. The young ones in our lives are taking new steps into school, some for the first time, others for the last for at least a while. Friends and loved ones are moving from vocations they have known to places of unknown freedoms and a new way of shaping their days. Leave taking.

These days we are traveling are taking us to the season of leave taking. Autumn. I watch as, first one, and then another leaf lets go from the trees in our yard, taking their leave of the branch that has held them and brought them nourishment. In just a few short weeks the winds will howl and violently sweep their siblings from their same comfortable home. Leave taking with be followed by leaf raking.

“Of all horrid things, leave taking is the worst.” Jane Austen wrote these words in her novel Emma. Perhaps. These moments, days, years of movement from one place to another, leaving someone, someplace, behind are certainly the heart-breaking times of life. But they are also the needed dance of growth, of possibility, of creativity made manifest. We know this as parents, as teachers, as friends, as earth-walkers. Before we can understand the joy and exhilaration of flying we must let go the rope that tethers us.

So it goes. And so I am holding my heart in my hands. Outstretched. The leave taking will push those I love to places of newness and great adventures, of the next chapter in a life well lived. And because my life is so intricately woven into the fabric of this Creation, I too, will feel its pull. It is as it has always been and ever will be. Amen and amen.