Life and Death and Orange Jewels

My husband's 94 year old mother died last week, a sad and difficult woman in life and in death. I am weary and so this morning I needed the woodland's embrace and there I found the refreshment and the solace I knew were waiting for me. I went looking for life, life in all its fullness, life of the forest floor - creatures, plants, fungi...all of it. 

On the short bank beside the woodland road, I came across a colony of tiny, bright orange mushrooms, themselves feeding on decaying matter...matter that is no longer alive, but giving life to these jewels of the forest. 

And in the distance, stood what first appeared to be a lone white mushroom... 

... standing like a single sentry guarding its place in the leaf litter. 

However, upon closer inspection, I realized that I had almost stepped on its nearly invisible companion of a different species, a couple of feet away. 

Two different species of fungi, quietly going about the work they were given to do, decomposing fallen leaves and branches, returning nutrients to the soil. Perhaps their mychorriza mysteriously co-mingle beneath the duff as they coil around tree roots, providing the giants greater access to needed water and minerals and a means of communication, tree to tree.

I have been thinking about death during these last few weeks and about its effect on those who are left behind, for death is never a solitary event. If we give ourselves to its effect, even in our agitation and deep sense of loss, over time we will be deepened and made acutely aware of and sensitive to that which is still alive...still alive in us, in those we care about, in the order of the natural world. I find the encouragement of God in the life of the fungi, strange as that might seem at first glance. They demonstrate that there is far more to each individual than what might be visibly recognized. Though their above-ground fruiting bodies wither away in due time, their life continues on in mystery, hidden away in where they can no longer be seen. And, because of fungi's role, though individual plants and creatures die, their life is never completely ended, for it is always recycled for the well being of another.  

In this season of coming face to face, again, with the reality of death I am reminded, again, of the abundance of life and my grateful participation in it.