Where there is no love, put love – and you will find love.
– John of the Cross
In other words, where you hope to find love you should surely plant it. Not a romantic, dreamy kind of love. A substantial, broader kind of love that feeds your roots, calms your soul, brightens your life. (more…)
I was walking down town in San Francisco earlier last month. It, like most major American cities, has a large number of people sleeping rough, living on the edge in the streets. Often they bounce between shelters, odd jobs and asking for change.
Walked past one woman, short hair, rough cut leather jacket, clothes too big – but I smiled at her as we passed in the street and she said, ‘Hey, momma.’
I replied, ‘Oh no, I’m nobody’s momma, much as I’d like.’
Kept on walking.
She said, ‘Hey Momma – I’ll bet you sure is somebody’s momma, maybe you just don’t know that you love’em like they need a momma to love’em.’ (more…)
I am surrounded by people who are dying. Some, slightly removed. Some I look in the eye every day. It appears common that there are two responses to terminal diagnosis, after the shock, grief and anger that is normal and healthy.
The first seems to be the most common: an heroic approach to hopeful expectation of medical miracles, an overwhelming belief in the power of positive thinking. A hopeful optimism about ‘living life to the full’, as if in defiance of the diagnosis.
The second, less common, also seems hopeful, at least to me. A hopeful pragmatism, a leaning into what it might mean to die well.
It seems to me that most of the western world is afraid of dying. Not of death, but of the process of dying. It’s the unavoidable conclusion we all face, regardless of spiritual beliefs, that the breath will end, the body will cease the function, the mind will close and the end of this life will come.
That last breath is just that. The end will come in a moment, a rattling breath held between long pauses until the pause becomes the final cadence. It’s the journey to those last seconds that we resist and pull against.
Only the Good Die Young
It’s hard not to feel the tragedy of life ending for people in their prime. Those who are still enjoying the fragrance of youth, the romance of leisurely weekends or the thrill of newborn days. Worse still, the tiny ones for whom life is swept away before it’s barely begun.
Maybe there is a hard truth in here; we’ve come to expect that life is some we’re entitled to, rather than a fragile, sometimes fleeting gift.
I feel the pull of injustice and fury, those new parents who face leaving the world before their children have a chance to know them. Those who die from preventable disease create the same response in me – but they are faceless, my friends are not.
Is it possible though, that we could be happy about dying? That we could communally accept death as a healthy process and engage in meaningful grief, acceptance and peace?
The Myth of Cure
We can cure some diseases. We can ease the symptoms of some viruses. We can prevent some illnesses from their drastic effects. But humanity, science and medicine has many limitations.
We cannot cure all maladies, and we absolutely cannot cure Death.
So when we talk about medicine, we talk about prolonging life. We rage, we fight, we strive for life – but we cannot cure Death. In fact, Death is necessary. More necessary that we often like to admit, but without it there can be no inheritance.
Death is a process of seasons; all of which are vital. Death is not a disease, death is not to be cured.
The Ideology Of Dying
Perhaps, Death is to be lived. As much a thriving, growing, seeding process as the seed that is buried in the earth to be transformed into something new. The pumpkin seed bears no resemblance to it’s fruit until you cut within it. Yet, life in one must cede in order to provide sustenance to the other. So in dying, purpose can be fulfilled as sweetly as in living. We just need to consider that dying well is in fact, an act of life.
The Theology Of It All
Inevitably, it seems that it’s hard to talk about the end of life without engaging in some belief or another about what happens after that.
It’s funny to me, that some people can talk about what people don’t deserve. The idea that someone could believe in a God who thinks some people do deserve a death while their children are in infancy, or a long, protracted suffering. Similarly, those who have the audacity to proclaim that death is something we determine worth by.
It’s a strange kind of grief that accepts the death of one, more easily than another and claims that as some sort of fairness or justice, by merit of what one deserves. Conversely, the phrase ‘if anyone deserves a miracle, it’s you’ sickens me. How disconnected from reality are we, if our idea of comforting words is such a false and futile statement?
You see, we’re still – Christian, Atheist, Muslim, whatever – susceptible to viewing Death as punishment, the unexpected ending, rather than what it is.
Death is the final season, the closing bell. It comes in all sorts of shapes and forms. It used to come sooner, often quicker. Now, we hold out the value of life above the value of a good death. We fight to hold onto days of dulled pain, for a shot of more time.
But time is only worth what you give it. Maybe we spend too much time waiting for life to get good before we start living. Then we rage against Death, when that’s as much part of living as anything else.
Times Past
More, more, more. It used to be that women sent their husbands to war with the hopes of their return. Nowadays, we scramble for text messages throughout the day.
Imagine if the modern-day long distance romance had to wait on airmail or sea delivery instead of digital audio, email and video calling? We’ve become used to the luxury of accessible time. Being able to connect with people more often, more easily. When we want to.
That’s the luxury we can’t bear to be separated from. Death remains as resolute as ever. No matter how many text messages, instagrams, blog posts, Facebook updates or coffee dates – when Death comes, connection is over.
It’s connection that we crave – connection that tells us, reminds us we are living indeed. No wonder we fight and rage against death. But still Death comes. So it should.
We’ve come to crave connection and scream ‘Unfair!’ when Death comes to take it from us, when we should be more interested in better endings.
In the beginning there were words. Words that in their being, brought earth and all creation into being with them. Words that shaped land and ocean, sky and heavens, words that placed stars into the atmosphere and brought water out of springs in the earth, to water the ground. That the ground might bloom into life, and the walking, breathing life that lived upon the earth might eat of the blossoming of the earth. All this came from words.
At the end, there are always words. Heavy ones, filled with sadness and loss, words that endeavour to bring meaning to a series of repeated breaths, repeated motions that construct a life. We describe people in all their broken glory, painting pictures of younger, more productive years. Words that make small triumphs from failures, words that give us the power to influence and change the purpose of a life, from smallness to greatness at the moment of death. (more…)
It’s possible, you know, to get stuck in a moment. To get stuck in a feeling. Reliving the words someone has spoken to you or about it. Reliving the experience you’ve just had. Constantly re-imagining how it may have gone differently, worked towards a different outcome.
It’s possible to just get stuck by running a thought to it’s final destination and not knowing where to go next. Or to forget to change the tape in your head that labels you ‘failure’, ‘loser’, ‘not good enough’, ‘unloved’ … or conversely, ‘hero’, ‘person everything relies on’, ‘fix-it man’.
Stuckness has a lot of layers. At first it can seem like you’re trapped, closed in, prohibited from moving. But the truth is, you’re not entirely prohibited from moving, you’re just unable to move in certain ways. Or, stuck in certain patterns of moving that you can’t change without some external force or intervention.
Internal self-talk is one of these moments. Whether the tapes playing in your head are on just one theme or 12 different ones on repeat, often you can’t change the tapes without further input and help.
Same with rebound relationships and holding a grudge. You know it’s not a good idea, that it can’t get you closer to the end goal. But like a soccer ball covered in glue, these emotional habits can be so sticky that once you make contact again, you can’t let it go.
Then there is stuckness that is good. It’s the kind of stuckness you get to when you’ve been waiting for a while. It’s the kind of stuckness that slowly enables you to open your eyes and see what’s really around you. Spend enough time being stuck and soon, pathways and possibilities for becoming unstuck might appear where they weren’t obvious before. Being stuck gives you time to really observe your surroundings.
Being stuck is a great time to acknowledge how you got to where you are.
Sometimes, when heartbreak comes along, our natural tendency is to find someone to soothe the wound, to heal the break, to make us feel loved again.. but in these times, it can be better to be stuck for a while and get to know ourselves again.
Being stuck is actually, more often than not, a good thing. It’s an opportunity to call on those we trust and rely on to intervene in our situation.
Not unlike writers’ block, a little waiting time is sometimes necessary for the right ideas and new opportunities to shake themselves loose. In the same way the gate and fencepost swell with summer heat and moisture, requiring effort and patience to open. Long walks in sunlit valleys lie beyond that fencepost, but not without time and work.
The trouble is, being stuck can feel like going nowhere, but a lot of the time, being stuck is just the break your sub-conscious needed to figure out what’s next and how to navigate it.
It’s like taking the precious seeds we carry, our hopes and dreams and then burying them down in earth, waiting and hoping for it to come back to life. It’ll take 6 weeks before that seed takes on a life of it’s own above the surface of the soil. It might even take longer. But Stuckness says, embrace the darkness and damp of the soil. Learn to be patient in the absence of light. Learn (and trust) that your time is coming.
That seed will likely sprout and look nothing like the seed’s skin it shed to become a plant, vegetable or flower. But it was never stuck. It was just the unseen growth that happens when it feels like you’re standing still.
Bruce and I met when he was in his late 50s, and I was a 17 year old school girl. He was a worldly musician, I was dreaming of serving God in youth ministry. How did we become friends? Well, because we chose to and we lived better for it. He wasn’t a Christian, although we talked about spirituality and philosophy endlessly. He never held my faith against me, in fact – as the years went on, he seemed more intrigued by it.
I thought he was intelligent enough to ask questions if he wanted, and I was intelligent enough not to give answers where they were unnecessary. We talked about people, sexuality, growing up, learning from your mistakes, trying to find your way in life and we talked of writing. We always talked of writing. (more…)