by Al Gustafson
Love and death are the great gifts that are given to us; mostly, they are passed on unopened.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Most of us on the spiritual path spend our time and energy trying to open ourselves up to the gift of love. We are familiar with that gift. Death … not so much.
Just the idea that death may offer something vitally important to the living, in Rilke’s words, a gift, may seem ridiculous. However, death like love, reveals something about the holy nature of life. We often move through our days unaware of the preciousness of the life we are living. Death tears a hole in the curtain that covers up the holy nature of our existence.
Long-term care (aka nursing home) insurance, estate planning, hospice care and DNR orders all invite some awareness of death and dying. However, the predominant view is that dying is simply a medical event and the most we can hope for is to make the best of a bad situation … hopefully, a long time from now.
Lent begins with ashes on our forehead and the reminder that from ashes we have come and one day will return. Every other day of the year for the most part, Christians keep the focus on the death of Jesus and not our own. But what if we regularly turned toward death like a master teacher and asked, how shall I live? Then we might start to become open to the outrageous idea that death is a gift for the living.
There is precedent for this in our tradition beginning with St. Benedict who in the fourth chapter of his Rule of Life wrote, “remember your death daily.” Then in the Middle Ages the practice of memento mori, took root. There are those who take the prayer of Psalm 39 quite seriously, “Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.”
Those who choose to regularly remember their death do so not out of morbid fixation but to inspire wisdom, humility, and a renewed sense of purpose. Life and death are a package deal. The three holiest days of the liturgical year include Good Friday and Easter Sunday. You can’t have one without the other.
All that is dear to me and all who I love are of the nature to change. In this life, there is no way to escape being separated from them. God has fashioned reality this way. Nothing lasts and life goes on.
Realizing our own impermanence allows us to gradually live into the deepest truths of what it means to be a human being. Compassion and kindness are paramount. We have a limited number of years to enjoy and make the most of the precious privilege of being alive. And like Jesus, to turn our hearts and lives over to the One whose mercy and goodness is the cornerstone of our existence.
This Lent the Still Point online chapel community invites you to Remember Your Own Death as a Path to Life. What can death teach us about life and what does life have to teach about death? Death may not be the enemy we believe it to be, but rather a gift given, mostly passed on unopened.