In today’s readings
we see a dire portent of the future.
Jesus and the Prophets foresee doom and gloom around every corner and it
does seem to be one of the central themes of the bible. Jesus and Daniel, both see the destruction of
humanity, but also the rebirth, a new and better people. Hence the birth pangs.
Most mothers can
attest to the pain associated with childbirth.
Most men cannot relate, although tearing my ACL and having my chest
cracked open brought me a great deal of pain.
So much so that after my heart surgery I prayed to God to let me die, or
take away the pain. At that moment I was
prepared to die. That type of pain and
anguish is what Jesus, John, Isiah, Daniel and others describe in the Bible.
Some think that
they are righteous enough they will be whisked away in a rapture. Good luck with that. If you think you are that righteous then you
are probably self-righteous and your wishes of being whisked away are
delusional. If you are a Christian and
you can’t wait for all your human beings to be destroyed while you survive,
perhaps you are not really a follower of Jesus at all.
No, the birth pangs
that Jesus talks about, are the painful transformation from the old ways of
war, famine, pestilence, and treachery that have besieged humanity from the
beginning of our creation. When we reach
the point of total destruction, when the scattered remains of humanity are
left, then the birth of a new peaceful utopian society shall take place. Sounds good, and for the last 2000 years
faithful Christians have been awaiting the “New World.”
But wait, there’s
more! What if Christ is not talking
about the total destruction of our species?
What if he is talking about the transformation of us as individuals? After all, how many times has Jesus talked in
parables and allegory? There is always a
deeper meaning to what Jesus says.
Always a deeper meaning.
What prevents us,
as individuals, these little islands of flesh, from beginning one with
Jesus? Do we have to suffer and undergo
and terrible death. When we are born and
thrust into the world we are full of love.
Usually the first human we encounter is our mother and her love fills
us, her voice, her touch, our fist gaze upon her, it’s all love. We are creatures of God and God is love. But then the world confronts us, we are
exposed to evil and to protect ourselves we build an ego. This ego gets us through the first half of
our life, yet it limits who we are, what we are. Confined by our egos we get caught up in the
materialistic world and do everything it takes to compete and survive and for
most of our loves the ego is a necessity.
What about
love? What happened to that love we had
as a child? In some people love can get
buried so deep that most others think them completely evil. Our egos demand.
“me first.” and our egos can be very selfish.
Jesus speaks of being reborn,
being born from above, and of being childlike to get into the Kingdom of
Heaven. To become childlike we need to
let go of our egos. We need to forego
the protections our mind has constructed.
We need to throw down all the stones of the wall we call our ego and
open ourselves to the Love that is God.
Does that sound
easy? Of course not. We spend our entire life building and feeding
our egos. They are to our minds as our
skin is to our body. It takes time and
practice to let go of our ego.
Contemplative prayer is one method.
Meditation, where we let go of our thoughts and wants and needs is one
method of freeing ourselves from our egos.
Suffering to the point where our egos are destroyed is another way. Pain so intense that we realize we are not in
control and ask God for help.
Christians, Hindus,
Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, indeed all religions have a branch of believers they
call mystics. Mystics are people of faith
who believe in a spiritual union with God.
Some people associate mystics with people who see visions. Throughout history, there have been such
mystics, but seeing visions is not a requirement, that is more of a gift from
God. Others believe in a more literal
interpretation of the Bible. The
literalists think that they know all the answers and need search no
further. I’m not trying to be
judgmental, I get upset when someone tells me they know all the answers and a
quick check in Wikipedia reveals 173 times since Christ when people have
predicted the end of the earth. You will
not find any mystics that think they know all the answers. But they do know that God is love and all
those that have experienced that love are radically changed.
All I can be is a
guide, a signpost, to the ultimate destination … Love. Jesus had two commandments; Love God with all
your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And Love thy neighbor as thy self. The heart is where love resides, our soul is
pure love the piece of God that is us, and the mind is where our ego takes
residence. When we throw down the stones
of our ego, then love can enter our minds.
Then and only then can we truly love our neighbors.
The wars and
famines and earthquakes that Jesus foretells.
In a metaphorical sense, are they
our internal struggles, our spiritual starvation, our pains and sufferings? This is not a stretch. For two thousand years crackpots have been
telling us that the end is near. Yet
here we are? What if all these apocryphal warnings are not about mankind as a
whole, but us as individuals? Ponder
this as you leave today.
In Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, “Enlightenment
for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water. At that moment,
all fear of death disappears.” When are
egos is cast aside and we realize that we are creatures of love, we no longer
fear death, for death is another form of birth.
If this sounds crazy, and it might, because
most of us are taught to fear death from an early age, then consider some
observations from a hospice worker.
Kathleen Dowling Singh wrote a book, the
Grace in Dying. And discusses the experiences she observed with people
dying.
“I realized that what I had been witnessing
in the process of dying was grace, all around, shimmering and penetrating. I
began, with newly opened eyes, to observe the subtlety of this grace and to
observe the qualities of grace in those nearing death. I became aware that
all of the observed qualities of the Nearing Death Experience point to the fact
that something profound is occurring here, a passage to deeper being. As I
worked with dying people from all walks of life and at many different levels of
spiritual evolution, normative patterns of change, of transformations in
consciousness, became apparent.
There appears to be a universal, sequential
progression into deeper, subtler, and more enveloping dimensions of awareness,
identity, and being as we begin to die—a movement from the periphery into the
Center. I have come to believe that the time of dying effects a transformation
from perceived tragedy to experienced grace. Beyond that, I think this
transformation is a universal process. Although relatively unexamined, the
Nearing Death Experience has profound implications. Dying offers the possibility
of entering the radiance, the vastness, of our Essential Nature, at least for a
few precious moments. . . .
The Nearing Death Experience implies a
natural and conscious remerging with the Ground of Being from which we have all
once unconsciously emerged. A transformation occurs from the point of terror at
the contemplation of the loss of our separate, personal self to a merging into
the deep, nurturing, ineffable experience of Unity.
My experience is that most people who are
dying have no conscious desire for transcendence; most of us do not live at the
level of depth where such a longing is a conscious priority. And, yet, everyone
does seem to enter a transcendent and transformed level of consciousness in the
Nearing Death Experience. . . . It is rather profound and encouraging to
contemplate these indications that the life and death of a human being
is so exquisitely calibrated as to automatically produce union with Spirit.”
The observations of Singh are not mind-blowing. I read the autobiography of Johnny Cash and
in it, he describes the death of his older brother, Jack. Jack wanted to be a preacher when he grew up,
but he suffered a terrible injury in a sawmill.
As the family surrounded him, he wavered in and out of consciousness. The final time he awoke with a smile on his
face and asked, “Can you hear them.”
Someone asked who and he responded, “The Angels, they are singing by the
river, and they are waiting for me. Then
he passed. To me that is what Singh is
describing.
This is what my favorite poet, Khalil Gibran
has to say about death.
You would
know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery
of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the
body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the
depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before
the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark
of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what
is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless
tides that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when
you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
To tie
this together, what Singh is describing is what mystics try to attain with
contemplative prayer and meditation. A
personal transformation, where we enter a state of grace without the baggage of
our egos, where peace and love replace need and want. The first language of God is silence. When we enter into silence that is where God
speaks to us.
Ponder
this as you leave today. When you have a
chance sit quietly and try to discard your thoughts, cares, and needs. Become as a child, release your burdens to
Christ and remember that you are loved, that love is where we came from and
where we go back to and love is never to be feared.
