Temple of Life

Life Blooms for Us

This post follows yesterday's comments about Bryant's "Thanatopsis"--Greek translation: "Meditation on Death."  I tried to say that the poem is so important because it asks the impossible.  How can we face our death with "unfaltering trust" and lie down for "pleasant dreams?"  Remember that it was Hamlet who thought about suicide, "To be or not to be," and feared most of all eternal nightmares!  Give Bryant his due!  At age 17, he penned "the question" which he seemed to find an answer for himself.

The question of facing death is not of the head--but the heart.  It quivers our bones.  I remember my high school years during a summer in Maine. It was the summer they called "the great fog," when it moved in for almost a month--dark, thick, enveloping the sun.  Somehow I had asked myself "the" question--what if there is nothing after death, just the enduring fog of nothingness, not even the awareness of silence?  And as a born and raised Christian, I got down and dirty to it: "Maybe the smartest people hid Jesus' body so that generations could worship a lie and be saved the fear of death?"  Yikes--a high school in a real funk and fog. 

Well, I worked on a fishing boat, a party boat for cod (when there was still codfish around!)  It was the same boat my Dad had worked on as a college kid.  The same day this question hung like a noose around my neck, I was working a trip on the boat.  I climbed up onto the roof for the trip out to sea. Only now do I laugh that I curled up in the life boat!  I was really adrift in my faith.  All I can tell you is that on my way out of the harbor, all of life pressed down on me with nothingness.....and that we hit a pocket, where suddenly after weeks, the sun broke through with a waterfall of light.  Everything lit up!  That light filled me with such a joy that I just knew the story of Jesus was TRUE for me.  Not in my head, or for history--but in my personal life itself.  I was washed in my own tears. 

Imagine my dilemma.  There I was in the depths of this experience with tears coming down my face...and all I had was a crew of Mainers to share it with.  Don't bet on it!  That would have required another conversion experience. 

Notice how I said--that was MY experience. It was intensely personal.  Intended for nobody else, it alone still beats in my heart.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  I still look into graves and ask myself "how can life really come from there?"  However, each time I face up to the question and walk there with others facing their deaths, I step beyond the place my limited reason to the Spirit of life which breaks through and fills the temple of life in me. 
 
I have never, ever known anyone on the verge of death to philosophize. What I have witnessed is that there are some who face the question and find the answer for themselves.  Until the question is really asked, and we let ourselves drift in the sea of nothingness, we cannot be found by the Answer for us.  The point is this:  when we really face "the" question--our own "Thanatopsis," then we can discover what, or who is truly ALIVE. 

Let's work with the above picture.  It is framed in the fog.  The boats fill the frame itself.  Right? Now, look at this picture. Same scene, next frame--there are tulips, life blooms in the middle of it.  Or, the fog does not prevent the flowers from blooming.  Whatever...but when we dare ourselves to confront the fog, we find and see the flowers as they really are--a gift always in our midst.  Go find the flowers meant for you.