10TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: YEAR C
Jesus gave him to his mother.
‘‘Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the
path. Until you have developed this awareness,
all other practices are obstructed.’’ —The Dalai
Lama
Death frightens us; leaves us
speechless and disconsolate; yet is
also an encounter that leads to
transformation.
Akira
Kurosawa’s film
1952 Ikiru (the
intransitive verb
‘‘to live’’ in
Japanese)
presents the
viewer with a
seeming
paradox:
a heightened awareness of one’s
mortality can lead to living a more
authentic and meaningful life.
The film’s greatest epiphany:
although curing a disease to extend a
person’s lifetime on earth may not
always be possible, healing of a
person’s spiritual wholeness is
always possible.
He constructs a space where the
audience can share his artistic
perspective as described in his
words: ‘‘to be an artist is never to
avert one’s eyes’’.
Anthony de Mello, the Jesuit
storyteller relates the tale of a young
woman who lived a regular life
pursuing ordinary ambitions, not
particularly interested in spiritual
practice. She had a baby, but the
baby fell ill and died before its’ first
birthday.
Clutching the little body in her arms,
she took to the streets, begging
anyone she met to help bring her
baby back to life. One passer-by
eventually pointed her in the
direction of the Buddha.
Buddha told her that there was only
one thing she could do to heal her
pain, and that was to bring him back
a mustard seed from a house in the
village that had never known death.
She excitedly knocked on the first
door. “I’m sorry. My brother died
recently.” At the second door, “We
have known many deaths in this
family.” At the third, “We are no
strangers to death in this house.”
And so on and on it went. Eventually
she was struck with the realization of
death and impermanence, that no
one lives forever, that death is part of
life. She bid farewell to her child and
returned to Buddha empty-handed.
“Did you bring me the mustard
seed?” Buddha asked her. She shook
her head, and explained how grief
had blinded her to the fact that she
was not alone in experiencing the
reality of death, but that she was now
ready to receive spiritual teachings.
She wanted to know what death is,
what happens at death, what
happens after death. She went onto
become a great spiritual expert.
No matter how much we deny death,
like everyone else we will find
ourselves staring it in the face soon
enough. Others’ deaths, and our
own. It is amazing how little we talk
about death in any meaningful way in
our modern society; death is taboo,
it is considered morbid, as if talking
about it will somehow make it more
likely.
This leaves us searching for words
and meaning when it happens to our
friends and loved ones, and utterly
unable to cope when we have to face
it in ourselves.
Life and death are two ends of the
same tunnel. They are parts of the
same continuum. If we don’t accept
this and learn to live our lives in
accordance with this truth, we will
experience fear, pain and confusion
as the exit looms.
If we do accept it, we find like the
young mother, and so like so many
spiritual practitioners since, that life
takes on a deeper meaning. Therein
lies the transformation to a deeper
humility, a sense of purpose, love,
transcendent wisdom and joy.
This life that is given to us is very
precious. Others’ lives also are
precious. If we don’t feel that way, it
is probably because we rarely think
about how soon we all have to leave
this world that God himself calls
‘Good’.
Death however is not the end, it is the
opening of a new chapter, one that
we are writing today with our
thoughts and actions.
Every day we prepare for many
things. We prepare to get out of bed,
we prepare our breakfast, we
prepare for school, we prepare for
work, we prepare what we’ll do that
evening, we prepare to pick up the
kids, we prepare how we’ll proceed
in our careers, we prepare to meet
someone, we prepare ways to earn
money, we prepare what to plant in
our gardens, we prepare replies for
those who’ve offended us, we
prepare for our next vacation, we
prepare for our retirement, we
prepare for bed….
But how many minutes today have
we spent preparing for the only
future that is absolutely certain to
occur?
When we can come to recognize God
within our own puny and ordinary
souls, we will also freely and daringly
affirm the Divine Presence in other
unexpected places.
Death,
transformation
and
resurrection; It is all one and the
same pattern. See it once, here, and
now, and soon you can see it
everywhere!
I recently had the opportunity to hear
Stephen Jenkinson’s talk “Dying Wise
in a Death Phobic Society”
Cntr+click to follow link
http://www.danielvitalis.com/rewild-yourselfpodcast/stephen-jenkinson-on-dying-wise-in-adeath-phobic-society
He states that the crucible of making
a human being is death, every culture
worth a damn knows that. It’s not
success; it’s not growth: it’s not
happiness: death…that’s the cradle
of your love of life.
Jenkinson speaks of the trade in
death; People are dying and their
pain is managed and their symptoms
are under control and what is in their
eyes when they are dying: I see a
wretched anxiety and a completely
overwhelming,
almost
toxic
fearfulness.
When I ask what are you afraid of,
eight out of ten will say that they
don’t want it to hurt.
So we say, ’no problem, we can get
you there.’ You can still be sort of
present; and that’s the promise, but I
tell you that’s the hell.
Speaking to a dying mother Jenkinson
continues: What I am going to tell
you, and this is going to be hard to
take on as a mom, but as one parent
to another, but I think it is truth.
Their capacity to be family after you
have gone is going to derive from
how you die; not of what you died,
but how you did it.
In other words how human you can
be in the face of something that
seduces you away from being human.
That is the table you set that is going
to determine what food they eat.
Grief is not a feeling; grief is a skill and
the twin of grief as a skill of life, is the
skill to being able to praise and love
life. Which means that wherever you
find one authentically done, the
other is very close at hand; grief and
the praise of life side by side.
At Nain, Jesus gives a son back to his
grieving mother; Jesus also promises
us that we shall also be re-united
with our loved ones.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower;
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
Griefwalker is a National Film Board of
Canada feature documentary film, directed by
Tim Wilson. It is a lyrical, poetic portrait of
Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people.
Filmed over a twelve year period,
Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching
sessions with doctors and nurses, in
counselling sessions with dying people and
their families, and in meditative and often
frank exchanges with the film’s director
while paddling a birch bark canoe about the
origins and consequences of his ideas for how
we live and die.
It seems the film detonates a strong desire
among people to talk about their experiences
of death and grief, and especially to be heard
by others. It is clear that a palpable feeling
of isolation grows up around people’s
encounters with dying in our culture, and the
National Film Board and Tim Wilson have
done something vital and needed in helping
to make the kind of soulful, community
building events that Griefwalker screenings
have become.