Thursday, March 10, 2011
“You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”
Kahlil Gibran
The words of this poem began to weave themselves through my prayers recently — ever since the day almost a month ago when I kept vigil beside my father’s hospital bed. On that day my family and I became aware that we were on a sacred journey of companioning my 92 year old father toward the threshold of eternity. He has endured many trips to the emergency room during this past year, often for reasons that affect the quality, though not necessarily the quantity, of his life. And each time my mother, my sisters and I have taken turns sitting with him in his hospital room. The most recent hospital visit was similar in rhythm and tempo to the others, but this time we each spent time alone with him and afterwards each one of us sensed the same thing, a new thing, a letting go. And now that he is home again, a steady stream of visitors has come, perhaps for the last time. We have been given the sacred gift of watching him relive the moments of his life with each new visitor as he says his good-byes. I do not know if his ritual of leave-taking is intentional or instinctual. But in these last few weeks I have seen him “open his heart wide unto the beauty of his life” and in that simple act he seems to have accepted that “life and death are one…” And for this reason, this season of Lent has taken on special significance for my family.
My elderly father’s embrace and celebration of his 92 years of life has sharpened my awareness of just how small my own life becomes, how narrow my vision and how puny my dreams can be whenever I allow something other than God to occupy the heart of my life. I want to live my life – I claim to live my life – according to the shema — loving God with all my heart and with all my soul, and with all my mind and with all my strength. But the truth is there is an ebb and flow in my life, times when loving God is constitutive of my very being and times when I allow other things to occupy God’s place in my life.
My greatest temptation is to live as though the core of my being is rooted in things that are not God – my intellect, my achievements, my self-sufficiency – as though I alone am responsible for the gifts I have and the success I can achieve with them. Living this way is like standing on the edge of a high cliff. When all goes well and the ground beneath me remains solid and firm, I am enormously satisfied with my success. And I begin to dream of decorating my cliff with pretty trinkets that sparkle in the sun, rather than thanking God for the gift of climbing. And when the ground shakes or the gale winds blow I dig in my heels and work harder to secure my place on the edge. And then I trade dreams of soaring on the wings of God for nightmares of falling off the cliff. I become like “an owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day and cannot unveil the mystery of light.”
But there are other times, when loving God flows so naturally; times when I have been unexpectedly drawn so completely into the heart of God – and not by any conscious effort on my part other than a letting go, a leave taking of all that isn’t at the heart of life. And it’s then that I know for certain that loving God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind, and with all my strength is not something I can ever achieve, not something I am capable of doing, not a program or a process I can begin. Rather, it is something God is already doing in me and for me.
And so, during this season of Lent, I will be moving mindfully along two parallel and sacred paths – one with my father toward the end of his life, and the other back to the heart of God. “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.” Thanks be to God.