In a number of earth- based cultures and traditions, the month of November portends a period of time when messages and guidance from those who have gone before us are more readily available to us. Perhaps this is was poet Wendell Berry's experienced and compelled him to write this piece:
A Meeting
In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one, ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."
Have you ever dreamt of someone who has passed?
What do they look like? Are they young, old, changed in any way? How have you changed since the last time they saw you? What would they notice about you now? What do you imagine they have been doing, if not "eating peaches off some mighty fine trees"?
May you find comfort in this time of year.
