Reflections for 10/8/10

"We fear nothingness, of course. That's why we fear death, too. I suspect that death is the shocking realization that everything I though was me, everything I held onto so desperately, was precisely nothing. the nothingness we fear so much is, in fact, the treasure that we long for. We long for the space where there is nothing to prove and nothing to protect; where I am who I am, and it's enough. Spirituality teaches us how to get naked ahead of time, so God can make love to us as we really are."(R.Rohr "Radical Grace" p. 333)

I remember the first time I heard that "we live in a culture of death." I thought, well that's actually not true. We live in a culture that denies death. We do everything humanly possible to put it off, to pretend that it won't happen. We actually deny death. We can talk about sex until we're blue in the face, but not death. It hurts too much.

Please don't ask someone to plan for their funeral, that would mean they may be facing reality. Walk around a cemetery sometime you'll be able to figure out who wants you to remember just how important they were when they were alive.

There's also that phrase you can't take it with you. That all the money, material goods etc. that one might accumulate here on earth, are meaningless in heaven or if you are not a believer in such a place, while your body decomposes in the ground. And more than likely your descendants and beneficiaries won't do much to remember you either.

From a faith perspective I've always viewed death as the greatest mid-life crisis. Yet that next stage in one's faith journey, the one that no one else will ever get to watch you doing is probably the one where you will get to be truly you.

But what if one's spirituality allowed for an experience of heaven here on earth. That maybe one's greatest joy and definition of self is not tied up in accumulating goods and praise, but is instead about being comfortable in one's own skin and happy with who you are.

Blessings,
Ed