This letter is from February 2009 during our time at Moriah School in Honduras 

I wonder if you have ever walked on pine needles.  I had the opportunity to this week in what was unfortunate circumstances.  One of our co-worker’s brother who had leukemia suddenly died and they closed school early for the teachers to attend the viewing and visitation.  The house was sparse and decaying.  In the ceiling two gaping holes yawned.  One had been covered with two sheets of beige construction paper in a desperate attempt at repair.  The tiled floor was arranged with red and dull orange squares laid in a checkerboard fashion.  The floor itself was covered with recently plucked pine needles, needles that stuck to one’s shoes as you walked and gave the room a faint smell of Christmas and cold December nights.  In the corner, propped up on two identical metal stands was the casket that held the young man. One of the sisters cried uncontrollably for thirty minutes as she stared at her brother’s lifeless body.  The others shuffled about talking little.  The mother was introduced.  She feigned a smile, but her desolate eyes betrayed her.  You know, it’s hard to ignore death when it sits in the corner.  I sat there thinking about what the pine needles might signify.  Perhaps eternity or rebirth?  Maybe they were some obscure Catholic tradition.  When I left I asked the other teachers what they meant and they actually had no idea.  The best they offered was to cover the smell.  Looking back on it, maybe it is fitting to trample on “Evergreens” when death arrives; those endless green reminders that winter will end and spring is coming.  I began to realize that maybe pine needles have more in common with death then one might think.  Jesus told his disciplines during their last meal together that He was the vine and they were the branches and that only by loving Jesus could the disciples experience life at its best.  All of human history, since Adam’s fruitful discrepancy has been an attempt to reattach the branch that fell off the tree.  It’s hard to put a pine needle back on, even when it’s sticky.  The problem is that the moment a pine needle is separated from the branch it ceases to be an evergreen.  More correctly, it has become an “almost brown.”  When man lost his direct connection with God, whether he knew it or not, he was already dead.  Yet, for a Christian’s funeral, perhaps another part of a pine tree might be a little more appropriate.  Although harder to walk on, a pine cone shows more fully the true nature of a disciple of Christ for through its death it brings forth new life.  In fact it has to die in order for a new evergreen tree to be created and so it is with those who follow Jesus.  Everyday, and ultimately in the end, we must die to those parts of our lives, those pine needles that are brown and wilting so God may reattach us to himself.  And everyday we allow God to do this process in our lives is a day we gain a better understanding and experience of what true life and true joy means.  So when I die, perhaps pine combs might be in order, just make sure to watch your step.