One Wild and Precious Life: The Gift of Mortality

This post was first written to fulfill a final assignment in a pastoral care class called "Dying & Grieving," taught by theologian and pastoral care specialist, Herbert Anderson, who teaches at the Pacific Lutheran Theological School (PLTS), which is part of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU).

The assignment was to imagine that you are the parish minister for a congregation, and you want to publish something in the congregation's newsletter reminding folks that we are mortal.
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Shams Cohen
Dying & Grieving
Final Reflection on Finitude: for the (future) church newsletter

5/23/08


One Wild and Precious Life: The Gift of Mortality

Many UUs are familiar with our well-loved poet, Mary Oliver, who writes in The Summer Day:

Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Philosopher and death sociologist Ernest Becker claims that most of the good works that we do in our lives are inspired by a subconscious and overwhelming terror at the idea of death. I find that idea to be a bit of a stretch, but I do agree that knowledge and certainty of mortality and of finitudes of time and energy can certainly be motivating.

Though much about death’s spiritual end is unknowable, much of the physicality of the death journey can seem frightening, and therefore perhaps not a favored subject of our meditations. Yet what wellsprings of yearning can we find in ourselves when we remember that our time here on Earth will come to an end? And when we allow ourselves to feel those yearnings, what do they inspire us to do, to be, and to become?

Many spiritual paths encourage us to contemplate in advance the moments of our dying. Some of these paths encourage us to use those thoughts as motivation for living a good and ethical life. Others of those paths encourage us to sustain a spiritual practice that might support us through the death journey, perhaps only for ease and comfort in the steps that we take on this side of death, but perhaps also for movements of the spirit that may or may not occur also after life has left the body.

The Sufi mystics encourage us to “die before we die,” to embrace rigorous spiritual practice designed to free us from the constraints of the yearnings and demands of our egos, so that we might be true vessels for universal love, compassion, and mercy , and perhaps have a chance to be of true service in this world.

In their early 90’s hit Get a Life, the hip hop band Soul II Soul informed us that, to get a life, meant to “be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective.” Another favorite songwriter of mine, Patty Griffin, uses knowledge of her finitude to find the courage to reject the cultural norms of scarcity, greed, competition, and war, choosing instead to embrace every option for love, both intimate and congregational. In her song No Bad News, Patty affirms her vision of this brave love, singing:

"I’m gonna find me a man, love so well, love so strong, love so slow, we’re gonna go way beyond the walls of this fortress. And we won’t be afraid, no we won’t be afraid, and though the darkness may come our way, we won’t be afraid to be alive anymore. And we’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us, ‘til there are no strangers anymore. "

Paradoxically, it is Patty’s willingness to look directly at death that makes her not only unafraid to be alive anymore, but also to be prophetic in issuing her call. As she sings to any potential perpetrators of the destructive dominant paradigm:

"You can’t have my fear. I’ve got nothing to lose. You can’t have my fear; I’m not gettin’ out of here alive anyway. And I don’t need none of these things, no none of these things, that I’ve been handed. Cause the bird of peace she’s flyin’ over, she’s flyin’ over and coming in for a landing. "

So Patty Griffin stares directly at her mortality and finds a way, with that stare, to clear away the detritus of our US American death culture, clearing instead a landing place for the bird of Peace. Now I’d call that a holy mystery revealing itself.

All pleasures come to an end, including the sensate and conscious pleasures of our lives in these bodies. Our lives struggling for survival, empowering freedom together, yearning and learning how to build a just and sustainable beloved world community. Our lives perhaps on these missions of meaning and mercy. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on the night before his assassination, we may not actualize our visions in this life time. But who do we become when we stop investing our prophetic visions with the power and strength of our own wild and precious energies? And who do we become when we remember and commit to our dreams?

We find the following wisdom teaching in the Jewish sacred text, the Pirkei Avot: "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it (2:21)."

Who are you today?
What work might you have to neither desist from nor complete?
Who are we today?
And who might we become, together?
What if we were finite and mortal?
What if time were running out?
How might we then embrace the gift, singly and together, of our one wild and precious life?

Please take a few moments to breathe. Be gentle and curious with yourself. And be with these questions.

Peace be with you, Blessed Be, and Amen.