Leaf. Her. Alone. For God's Sake

 Leaf.

HEr.

 Alone.

 For God’s Sake.

She sat alone admiring.

To the normal person it was just a leaf; a brown, crinkly piece of tree trash that littered their yard each autumn. Something of a nuisance, cursed by the tongs of the rake and the mouth of its operator. But she wasn’t normal and therefore it wasn’t “just” a leaf.  She would brazenly argue with anyone who called it “just” a leaf. In her world there was no “just” anything. Everything was part of something else; something grander. “Just” invoked singularity and there was no singularity in life. Life was plural. Everything was attached to something else. The leaf was attached to the tree, the tree was attached to the ground, the ground made up the earth, the earth was part of the universe and somewhere out there floating in the cosmic abyss was its Creator.

So it wasn’t “just” a leaf. It was part of the universe; part of God.

She lost herself in the transparency of the amber miracle she held in her hand.

“This is God’s paint.” she concluded.

Flowers were created to please humans. Their beauty makes us happy. She remembered standing in her grandmother’s rose garden and the ecstasy she felt surrounded by a palette of colors; rogue reds, yellows that exploded and mingled with the sunlight and girlish pinks that when stared at for any length of time, seem to her the most perfect color in the world.

But as she sat beneath the partially naked tree and looked over the valley of autumn and saw the foliage tapestry of golden oaks and salmon maples and birch trees whose white bark stood out staccato against the October background she decided; while flowers brought humans pleasure, trees (and especially leafs) were created to please God’s eye and bring beauty and happiness to Him.

We see His microscopic beauty in the small delicate petals of tulips; the blossoming petunias and the determination of a daisy reaching for the sunlit sky.

But He sees His majestic beauty on a grander scale in the woods and forest; the sprawling greens of summer; the mosaic oranges of autumn; the black and white blanket of winter and the budding rainbows of spring

And being an unselfish God, He shares this splendor by making hills and mountains for humans to view His leafs; His paint; His art. And He allows birds to live in it and caterpillars to eat it and kids to gather it up and jump in it and grandmas to use it as compost for their rose gardens. And to think its ”just” a leaf.

*I'm aware that the rest of the world spells the plural of leaf, leaves. But I refuse to follow that rule and I will spell the plural of leaf, leafs until the day I die and I encourage every other writer to do the same:)