Awakening

We cannot buy life without end
or avoid going to the grave...
This is the lot of those who trust in themselves...
Like sheep they are driven to the grave.
- Psalm 49

It seems almost trite in this modern world to say that we will die. Of course we will die. Death becomes us. Yet, our avoidance is so complete and compelling that in all things we seek not to die but to maintain, not to live but to hold on. People have said they never felt so alive as when they were at death's doorstep - that in that moment when they were held at the very precipice they felt the exhilaration of stepping off into.......what?

If you believe in the promise of eternity your expectation is for something better, greater, and more than what life has given. You believe in new life, life made complete, life beyond life. And so these eternalists look forward to the grave, trusting that in dying they will live. But what of those who are more firmly rooted in the ground of the earth they inhabit. Their letting go is not so determined or ordained perhaps.

In the Catholic church when you die you aren't necessarily knocking on those pearly gates in that moment of letting go - you may go to a waiting room, a purgatory of sorts, where you wait. No one seems to know for how long you wait or what you do while you wait but there does seem to be some consensus of Catholic opinion on the fact that you will wait. I don't know if you wait for a final determination of up or down or if you are just waiting for Peter's call to come. The Protestants decided to simplify the choices, you die, you go up or you go down. No one even prays for you after you die because your fate is decided, no waiting time, no need for prayer. And of course, many of us are not of the Catholic persuasion or even of the Christian so perhaps in these other belief systems after-death is a different after-life. What seems to be a generally held opinion is that whatever comes next is either better or deserved.

So, if like sheep, our lot is to be driven to the grave then it would seem natural that our curiosity about the other side would compel us to keep the grave in sight. But typically, we do not do so. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case, it being more exciting to contemplate the t.v. guide than the hereafter? Is it a failure of imagination or intelligence that leaves us blinded by the light of t.v. not eternity? Or is that light so bright that it stuns us into sheep like complacency as we stumble ever onwards towards it? So we slumber on as we lumber on knowing what we do not want to know and hoping that in the end there is resurrection.

Grief

Lately, it seems that loss is part of my landscape. Not big loss, death of family or friends, but the little losses that keep adding up. Loss of health, loss of activity, loss of friendship, loss of abilities. When I listen to what others are saying I hear so much grief over these little losses, sadness and anger over the letting go of things that have meant much. I wonder if we are all just practicing for the ultimate loss of our own lives. As we get older I think it is harder to ignore the impact of loss in our lives. We aren't able to outrun, outthink, or outdrink it anymore. If we do a mental inventory of gain and loss, over time loss wins. And littles losses add up. And big losses become more frequent. And eventually if we are still alive we live with loss as a pretty constant companion.

When I speak to my Mother she talks about her failing eyesight, her inability to drive, her difficulty following recipes. My Mother in Law talks about her loss of her ability to walk, her loss of her husband's companionship due to dementia, her sorrow over friends who have passed on. My friends talk about the joints that remind them everyday that they ain't as good as they used to be, their concern about losing their jobs, pensions, security etc. My children talk about losing boyfriends, familiar homes, security.

And I sense with all of them the sorrow and anger just below the surface and the weary resignation of knowing that there is more to come. Is there any better reason to believe in God? If hope springs eternal it must spring from some well. Loss may be part of life but is it part of resurrection? Is heaven a place where the lonely find comfort and solace or is heaven a place where no memory exists of the losses of living? I didn't always believe in heaven. I thought it was a place conveniently dreamt up to pacify losers. Now I think that heaven must exist or else none of us would continue on. If loss is our lot in life why do we all keep moving forward, striving on, making the best of it, hoping for more? Maybe we don't believe it, maybe we don't think about it, but every action we take is fueled by some inkling of it's reality or we would stop acting. Heaven is so much a place in our hearts and souls that even when we forget it we don't lose it. Because heaven is home - our home - the place where we can resume living without loss. We may not open our hearts to God but God is in our hearts, urging us towards spirithood, even as we are bogged down in messy, sad life.

This is why we don't all fall down in a puddle of tears and sorrow every day. God is with us, heaven is open, we are preparing. In life we can't escape loss, in death we will overcome it.