The GHOST of Patrick Swayze

Demi Moore & Patrick Swayze

"I had a life....
 I had a life....
 And you threw it away! 

Sam Wheat (Swayze)
GHOST

May Patrick Swayze rest in peace...as I reflect on the irony that he starred in a movie called GHOST shortly before his untimely death from cancer.  With all due respect, let me share how struck I was taken by his scream at his murderer in the movie--"I had a life! You threw it away!"   Painfully true for that event in the movie.  One could also say that you never know the slender thread that divides us from life and death and easily it can be broken...as one author has written solemnly.  I just wonder if regardless of when and how we die--we are still responsible for how we lived up until that time.  Our deaths are coming soon enough--and our question is how we live now.

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There is also another take on this perspective about losing your life.  Yes, your life is priceless, and nothing I am saying should take away from that fact.  But! Is it priceless because it is short short?  Or, because what you do now is set in the large Story of God's gifts that give beyond this life?  If we live as people of faith, then what I do now is also priceless because I am always taking part in that eternal Story.

Last words go for the stark contrast behind hell and heaven in this movie--what powerful images!  You either deal with the demons who carry you off or the Light with beings that takes you away.  There is no sense of a person dying into more progression of development.  It's black and white, hell or heaven--which contrasts sharply with the progression we see in Sam Wheat as he moves from the panic of sudden death and the after life to developing its skills to even the farewell kiss!  In either world, God is not finished with us.  I love the prayer that says that we go from strength to strength in perfect peace in the world to come.