Making Sense of Death
"I am now in the process of moving from life to Life - or to being "swallowed up by Life" as Paul describes the transition through physical death in 2 Corinthians 5:4. As I get closer to this 'big conversion' I am discovering other transitions along the way - changes in how I view suffering, time, relationships, grief, call, and so many other things.
All life on earth is terminal, and while we can certainly contribute to our own well-being in amazing ways, none of us is finally in control. One day my life will be swallow up by Life. And for today, I am choosing truth, joy, and love wherever and however I can. I am resolute in my desire to learn, to fulfill my calling, and to engage each day with as much joy as I am graciously given or can borrow."
Steve Hayner, Columbia Theological Seminary, blog posts, 2014.
All life on earth is terminal, and while we can certainly contribute to our own well-being in amazing ways, none of us is finally in control. One day my life will be swallow up by Life. And for today, I am choosing truth, joy, and love wherever and however I can. I am resolute in my desire to learn, to fulfill my calling, and to engage each day with as much joy as I am graciously given or can borrow."
Steve Hayner, Columbia Theological Seminary, blog posts, 2014.
It is what it is
What needs to be said or done or prayer so that I can be at peace with this loss?
What is God's view of this pain?
After a time, as I pray, I hear God's affirmation but also -
'You can let go of the pain now. It is no longer yours to carry. She lived her days as best she could. She is no longer yours to carry.'
As I draw into God I sense no anger, nor even any sadness, just a vast sense of
'It is what it is' ...
This does not discount suffering, or glorify it or drown in it
In God there is acceptance that it happened.
The emotions were real but not eternal.
That is how it was.
"Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted." said Jesus.
Maturity is a radical acceptance of life the way it IS
rather than the constant struggle to avoid, escape or remake life
into how we believe it should be.
The challenge is 'both-and':
to both accept things as they are
while at the same time to honour what matters,
the truth of what I am experiencing,
what God has woven into my life.
So let what is
be what is.
Let the people around you
be who they are.
Therefore, grieve well.
Grieve for what might have been.
Grieve for your idealised illusions of how you wanted life to be.
And keep forging your passions and your values
Honour your needs but take full responsibility for them.
Learn to live with discomfort.
Let disappointment and frustration lead you deeper into what you care about
and release everyone else from having to take care of those things for you.
That is what growing up looks like.
What is God's view of this pain?
After a time, as I pray, I hear God's affirmation but also -
'You can let go of the pain now. It is no longer yours to carry. She lived her days as best she could. She is no longer yours to carry.'
As I draw into God I sense no anger, nor even any sadness, just a vast sense of
'It is what it is' ...
This does not discount suffering, or glorify it or drown in it
In God there is acceptance that it happened.
The emotions were real but not eternal.
That is how it was.
"Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted." said Jesus.
Maturity is a radical acceptance of life the way it IS
rather than the constant struggle to avoid, escape or remake life
into how we believe it should be.
The challenge is 'both-and':
to both accept things as they are
while at the same time to honour what matters,
the truth of what I am experiencing,
what God has woven into my life.
So let what is
be what is.
Let the people around you
be who they are.
Therefore, grieve well.
Grieve for what might have been.
Grieve for your idealised illusions of how you wanted life to be.
And keep forging your passions and your values
Honour your needs but take full responsibility for them.
Learn to live with discomfort.
Let disappointment and frustration lead you deeper into what you care about
and release everyone else from having to take care of those things for you.
That is what growing up looks like.
No Rhyme Nor Reason
Reflecting on sudden death
Friday 24 November 2017. Silvia Purdie.
I’m just back from a funeral. And I’m gutted. I feel hollow, hungry but not for food. You know the sadness that feels like paint stripper. My grief is not really my own, for I never met the man who died, but for the beautiful woman and two young girls left bereft by his death. We know the family through our preschool music group. The girls’ mum was a driving force in getting the group started. The girls’ father was an environmentalist, at home on skis in the mountains or careering around the hills on a bike. A quiet gentle wise good man and a wonderful dad.
There is no upside to his death, no silver lining. No sense to be made, no rhyme or reason to it. Perhaps if he had falled down a mountain cliff, perhaps, but to be killed by someone running a red light, on a city street? - that is utterly banal and pointless.
Our brains rebel at pointlessness; the human mind is hardwired for meaning. Premature death ruptures the fabric our lives are made of. When a child dies people say stupid pious-sounding things like “God wanted another flower for his garden” because even such offensive rubbish feels better than nothing.
It is deeply offensive to me to suggest that God causes tragic death. It is also outrageously un-biblical. Jesus wept at the death of his friend, and raised a boy to life out of gut-deep compassion for his grieving mother. At no point in the New Testament is death referred to as being the will or action of God. With one exception, Jesus himself, who willingly walked to death on the cross. For one reason, to go on ahead of us into the terrible suffering of death, so that we would not be abandoned to it. So that death would not have the last word. So that life and love would conquer the grave.
As I get older I find myself growing in my capacity to hold both meaning and lack of meaning. I don’t ask the ‘why?’ question any more. Why did this man die? He died because another man chose to drive through a red light. That’s it. There is no other answer. When we are children we ‘know’ that the world revolves around us. So the 4-year-old will ask herself “What did I do wrong that made my daddy die?”. Through the years she will need to let go of this question, just as we adults need to let go of the question “Why did God let him die?”.
Many people cannot believe in a good God who would let terrible things happen. For many this is a big barrier to Christian faith. We would prefer a safe world run by the perfect dictator, structurally engineered to prevent all accidents and disasters. The God that Jesus called Daddy could have lorded over a cotton-wool universe, I guess, but he chose a different plan. This plan that we call the real world gives us far more freedom than is good for us; freedom to both design traffic lights and legal systems and also to ignore laws and red lights. So people are killed and maimed for no good reason at all, and certainly not by God’s action or negligence. The God that Jesus called Dad chose to share this world with us, feeling our pain in order to save us from it. In Jesus’ ways those who mourn are comforted and those who die are raised to everlasting life.
Faith does not protect us from tragedy or grief. But faith does sustain us through tragedy and grief because under the swirling waves of loss there is solid rock to stand on, everlasting arms so much bigger than us that hold us and will not let us go.
Friday 24 November 2017. Silvia Purdie.
I’m just back from a funeral. And I’m gutted. I feel hollow, hungry but not for food. You know the sadness that feels like paint stripper. My grief is not really my own, for I never met the man who died, but for the beautiful woman and two young girls left bereft by his death. We know the family through our preschool music group. The girls’ mum was a driving force in getting the group started. The girls’ father was an environmentalist, at home on skis in the mountains or careering around the hills on a bike. A quiet gentle wise good man and a wonderful dad.
There is no upside to his death, no silver lining. No sense to be made, no rhyme or reason to it. Perhaps if he had falled down a mountain cliff, perhaps, but to be killed by someone running a red light, on a city street? - that is utterly banal and pointless.
Our brains rebel at pointlessness; the human mind is hardwired for meaning. Premature death ruptures the fabric our lives are made of. When a child dies people say stupid pious-sounding things like “God wanted another flower for his garden” because even such offensive rubbish feels better than nothing.
It is deeply offensive to me to suggest that God causes tragic death. It is also outrageously un-biblical. Jesus wept at the death of his friend, and raised a boy to life out of gut-deep compassion for his grieving mother. At no point in the New Testament is death referred to as being the will or action of God. With one exception, Jesus himself, who willingly walked to death on the cross. For one reason, to go on ahead of us into the terrible suffering of death, so that we would not be abandoned to it. So that death would not have the last word. So that life and love would conquer the grave.
As I get older I find myself growing in my capacity to hold both meaning and lack of meaning. I don’t ask the ‘why?’ question any more. Why did this man die? He died because another man chose to drive through a red light. That’s it. There is no other answer. When we are children we ‘know’ that the world revolves around us. So the 4-year-old will ask herself “What did I do wrong that made my daddy die?”. Through the years she will need to let go of this question, just as we adults need to let go of the question “Why did God let him die?”.
Many people cannot believe in a good God who would let terrible things happen. For many this is a big barrier to Christian faith. We would prefer a safe world run by the perfect dictator, structurally engineered to prevent all accidents and disasters. The God that Jesus called Daddy could have lorded over a cotton-wool universe, I guess, but he chose a different plan. This plan that we call the real world gives us far more freedom than is good for us; freedom to both design traffic lights and legal systems and also to ignore laws and red lights. So people are killed and maimed for no good reason at all, and certainly not by God’s action or negligence. The God that Jesus called Dad chose to share this world with us, feeling our pain in order to save us from it. In Jesus’ ways those who mourn are comforted and those who die are raised to everlasting life.
Faith does not protect us from tragedy or grief. But faith does sustain us through tragedy and grief because under the swirling waves of loss there is solid rock to stand on, everlasting arms so much bigger than us that hold us and will not let us go.
Packing up
What will you leave behind when you are gone?
Piles of boxes where your life used to be
fluffy corners of dust behind a bookcase
(dust of your skin, tangled with cobwebs, a paperclip, one lost earring)
treasures tucked away in a drawer
(a love note from a child, a tangled gold chain)
until the drawer is emptied out and ready for someone else to fill.
When you are gone other people must choose
what to keep, what to throw, give or toss to the wind
and the space that was yours no longer is yours
but is repacked, repainted, refilled
as through you never were.
What marks have you left indelibly inscribed ...
a scratch in a door
a tree you dug-in that grows upward yet
a page you wrote or painted or signed
that someone might keep for some years yet
until one day it too will be tossed away?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Make way! Make room for someone else
to live in your home, to fill with their things.
Let it go! Let it go
for your life was not stored in cupboards or planted in soil
but was and is and will forever be
hidden in Christ, folded in love.
What will you leave behind when you are gone?
Piles of boxes where your life used to be
fluffy corners of dust behind a bookcase
(dust of your skin, tangled with cobwebs, a paperclip, one lost earring)
treasures tucked away in a drawer
(a love note from a child, a tangled gold chain)
until the drawer is emptied out and ready for someone else to fill.
When you are gone other people must choose
what to keep, what to throw, give or toss to the wind
and the space that was yours no longer is yours
but is repacked, repainted, refilled
as through you never were.
What marks have you left indelibly inscribed ...
a scratch in a door
a tree you dug-in that grows upward yet
a page you wrote or painted or signed
that someone might keep for some years yet
until one day it too will be tossed away?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Make way! Make room for someone else
to live in your home, to fill with their things.
Let it go! Let it go
for your life was not stored in cupboards or planted in soil
but was and is and will forever be
hidden in Christ, folded in love.