Bare Bones of Life

Dying, We Live...

The dog was walking me this morning in early hours, and a vulture flew directly over my head. Besides wishing for an umbrella, I also wondered what had died.  Vultures are the world's undertakers!  I did not have to wait long. There in the woods was another vulture at work on a partially eaten deer carcass.  As it took flight, I could see the rack of bones, bleached white against brown leaves.  I did not ask with Ezekiel if these bones could live?  But they stood out as signposts announcing mortality for every living thing.

Did Bernie Siegel get it right in Love, Medicine and Miracles that the more we confront death, the more we live? Now look at the vulture.  It literally lives by eating carrion--death!  What do you think?  Parallel?  The Medieval theologians talked about Christ swallowing up death.  Even in the Men in Black, what happens?  The agent is swallowed up and thereby lives! 

Yes. Our bones carry death.  But death is swallowed up when we confront it--then we live!  Over and over, I have heard terminal patients say that facing their deaths, they live into the moment as never before. One person I heard say this:  "I'd never go back.  Living like I was--denying the reality of death, I did not really live." 

I do not want to change places with somebody who is terminal.  Can't I live with that knowledge now?  Get Siegel's book if you want to follow his thinking. Live into your death to find life!  Asw St. Paul has said--"Dying, we live!"