To befriend death, we must claim that we are children of God, sisters and brothers of all people, and parents of generations yet to come. In so doing, we liberate our death from its absurdity and make it the gateway to a new life.
In our society, in which childhood is something to grow away from, in which wars and ethnic conflicts constantly mock brotherhood and sisterhood among people, and in which the greatest emphasis is on succeeding in the few years we have, it hardly seems possible that death could be a gateway to anything.
Still, Jesus has opened this way for us. When we choose his way to live and die, we can face our death with the mocking question of the apostle Paul: “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). This is a choice, but a hard choice. The powers of darkness that surround us are strong and easily tempt us to let our fear of death rule our thoughts, words, and actions.
But can we choose to befriend our death as Jesus did? We can choose to live as God’s beloved children in solidarity with all people, trusting in our ultimate fruitfulness. And in so doing, we can also become people who care for others. As men and women who have faced our mortality, we can help our brothers and sisters to dispel the darkness of death and guide them toward the light of God’s grace.
Our first task is to befriend death. I like that expression “to befriend.” I first heard it used by Jungian analyst James Hillman when he attended a seminar I taught on Christian Spirituality at Yale Divinity School. He emphasized the importance of “befriending”: befriending your dreams, befriending your shadow, befriending your unconscious. He made it convincingly clear that in order to become full human beings, we have to claim the totality of our experience; we come to maturity by integrating not only the light but also the dark side of our story into our selfhood. That made a lot of sense to me, since I am quite familiar with my own inclination, and that of others, to avoid, deny, or suppress the painful side of life, a tendency that always leads to physical, mental, or spiritual disaster. . . .
I have a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really befriend death we would be free people. So many of our doubts and hesitations, ambivalences and insecurities are bound up with our deep-seated fear of death that our lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of as a threatening stranger.
“Most fundamentalism, greed, violence, and oppression can be traced back to the separation of idea and affection.”—John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Verse of the day
The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
– Leviticus 19:34
Voice of the day
I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t know, but remind you of everything you know to be true in the Abrahamic tradition. There is a charge to care for the stranger; who for any reason cannot go home.
– Bishop Michael Rinehart
Prayer of the day
God, grant us the strength to welcome those who seek refuge and the grace to offer them the love and support they need. Let our actions reflect your boundless mercy and our hearts be open to those in need, honoring the divine truth that all are worthy of your care.
“Love of the enemy means that a fundamental attack must first be made on the enemy status. How can this be done? Does it mean merely ignoring the fact that he belongs to the enemy class? Hardly. For lack of a better term, an ‘unscrambling’ process is required. . . . The concept of reverence for personality, then, is applicable between persons from whom, in the initial instance, the heavy weight of status has been sloughed off. Then what? Each person meets the other where he* is and treats him as if he were where he ought to be.”—Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
“Perhaps we could bury our hate and greed and ignorance. Then we wouldn’t have to wonder and worry about where to bury our brothers and sisters caught in yet another conflict.”—Shawnee Baldwin, member of the Writing Nonviolence Affinity Group
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
—Wendell Berry in Openings: Poems by Wendell Berry
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”—Ruth Bader Ginsburg
PEACE HAS COME TO MEAN THE TIME when there aren’t any wars or even when there aren’t any major wars. Beggars can’t be choosers; we’d most of us settle for that. But in Hebrew peace, shalom, means fullness, means having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself.
One of the titles by which Jesus is known is Prince of Peace, and he used the word himself in what seem at first glance to be two radically contradictory utterances. On one occasion he said to the disciples, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). And later on, the last time they ate together, he said to them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27).
The contradiction is resolved when you realize that, for Jesus, peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love.
Verse of the day
Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.
– Romans 12:16
Voice of the day
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
– Thomas Merton
Prayer of the day
Lord, today may we love others without passing judgment. May we see your image in their faces and give them our most profound joy.
Pastor Michael Moore's Blog 