Sermon: Marked for Death

“Death is before me today

  like the recovery of a sick man,

  like going forth into a garden after sickness.

 

  Death is before me today

  like the odor of myrrh,

  like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

 

  Death is before me today

  like the course of a stream,

  like the return of a man from the war-galley to his home.

 

  Death is before me today:

  like the home that a man longs to see

  after years spent as a captive.” – Pyramid Texts, 3000BCE

 

We all live with death close at hand. Sometimes it is touching our lives directly, because someone we love is dying or has died. Sometimes its presence is oblique, and we turn our eyes away, avoiding it as much as possible. And then inevitable, one day death is immediate; it is our turn at the door. We may learn that we have a death sentence, or we may live unaware of the hour of our death, but always we are under a death sentence, known or unknown, for none yet as escaped this life alive.

 

As human beings, whether we are alone in this talent or not, we do live our lives with the comprehension, however vague, that we will someday die. Alongside this truth lies another: most of us do not prepare ourselves for death. No matter how long the life, the majority of us come to our own end with some surprise and sense that we are not yet ready. Even if we are given the news of our impending death, only some of us will spend that time making a real peace with life and letting go.

 

Our culture has a deeply disturbed relationship to death. Primarily we avoid it; and we outsource the care of the dying to “professionals.” We do not hold an understanding of ourselves as profoundly capable of handling the dying of others, or of dying, ourselves.

 

From a more public context, our exposure to death is filled with horror. We have what I consider an unhealthy tendency toward violence and suffering, we transmute our fears and anxieties about death quite often into brutal and soul-less glorifying of nasty endings. Even in what is supposed to inform us, our news, there is a maxim: if it bleeds, it leads.

 

It is natural to have some fear of death, because it is an unknown, and we have reasons, biological and psychological, to fear the unknown – adaptive reasons, healthy reasons. Most of all, too, I know what motivates our fear is not death per se but the suffering that might come before death. But our alienation of death's place in the fullness of our lives is a piece of this puzzle. Because we do not embrace death, place it within the normal sphere of our lives, face it with living ritual and reflection, we live our lives without the benefits of the wisdom that death brings to some who – by choice or by fate – are forced to recognize its place within the context of their own experience.

 

The Rev. Forrester Church, who only recently himself died, paid much thoughtful consideration to death. He said, “religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.” I agree, but what does that mean for a religious person? It's not clear to me that much is solved by “being religious” if a faithful exploration of death is not a part of our spiritual journey. We must look death in the eye, and discover what it has to teach us.

 

Most religious traditions do treat death, of course. But one I always feel drawn to, especially this time of the year, is the Wiccan tradition, a pagan spirituality that draws deeply from the wisdom of nature. So fall and winter are seasons of death and rebirth. October 31 is a sabbat, one of the great turnings of the wheel of life and death, and on Samhain, the wheel lands on “death,” and the veils between life and death become thinnest. Many people, pagan or not, do find fall to be a time when we are more inclined to be aware of death. Leaves are turning and falling; harvest is done, cold and dark days lie ahead. All verdancy we have reveled in over the summer fades away. The pagan religion does not impose itself on nature; instead it rises up from what wisdom may be found there.

 

Religion, to be useful in our lives, must adequately treat death. As Unitarian Universalists, we are at an awkward phase in our religious lives. Having largely walked away from our Christian roots and all the religious practice and ritual that we once had in that tradition, we are left we nothing we call our very own: few rituals of any kind. All we have we must borrow or steal from others.

 

This is not so bad as it sounds. All religions are accretions of others, all are built on human experience and none sprung full blown from Zeus' head, no matter what you may have heard. So even if we are borrowing or stealing, I believe we need to bring into our religious lives a practice of living with dying, a practice of looking directly at death, and asking what it demands of our lives. I think there should be two special times of the year when this kind of work is done – but mind, this is my opinion only. You might have other ideas about the when. I believe fall, say – Halloween, Samhain time? – is the time to face death directly. I believe Midwinter – New year's? Imbolc, in February? – is a time for asking what needs to be born again in us.

 

So today I want to invite you into a practice of breathing death, a time of reflection on what death has meant in your own life. Maybe you have lost someone you loved to death. Maybe you have come close to death; maybe you know your own death is not so far away. If you did know you were dying – for example, if you had a year left to live – what would you do differently?

 

The poet Kabir said: what we call salvation belongs to the time before death./ If you don't break your ropes while you are alive/do you think ghosts will do it for you afterward?/...what is found now is found then.”

 

What would you let go of right away, if you were going to die in a year's time? What things would you say to those you love, to those you are alienated from? What amends would you make, what joys would you pursue? If someone you loved were dying, what would you say to them? How would you love them differently?

 

Someone you love is dying. We just forget it, or choose not to remember. We simply opt to put off living as if it truly mattered, as if every tomorrow were given.

 

After Ember was born, I suddenly understood how much everything mattered. At the same time, this new and horrible existential fear rose up in me: what if she died? How would I live if she did not? I was not incapacitated by this fear, but it wounded me. I tended toward overprotectiveness. At the end of seminary, I finally realized that I had spent a pretty good amount of emotional energy fearing the deaths of people I love, in a way that wasn't really helpful. Growing up, I dreaded each birthday on some level, because I knew it meant that my grandparents were a year older, too. Now was this omnipresent fear of losing Ember, or dying myself, and leaving her behind.

 

So I began death meditations. I sat down and imagined life without Ember, her life without me, my life after my grandparents, the world without me. In time, I moved past the anxious reaction of being certain that I would kill myself if my child died, to a more healthy place of knowing that I would instead love her every moment that we were together, and do my very best to love and live life whatever happens. I have to do this again sometimes. I'm not perfect. I spent many sleepless nights, listening to Ani breathe the first year of her life. I still wake in the night and listen to her, or watch her chest rise and fall on the monitor. I tell folks, with no facetiousness, that I am just like Shirley McClain at the beginning of Terms of Endearment. She walks into a darkened room and looks at a crib. Then she calls out, “Herb, she not breathing.” “She's breathing!” yells an exasperated man, who clearly has heard this before. “No, she isn't,” Shirley says fatalistically. She goes to the crib and reaches in and pinches the baby, who starts wailing. With relief and bouyancy, Shirley leaves the room, saying, “that's better!” I am the mom who will check, who worries when my husband is late or doesn't answer his phone. But death is not all there is of life, it is not even close to the most important part. It is simply a reminder that we do not have forever, that now matters very much, that today is the day we need to be alive. So though I worry, I practice nodding respectfully to death and trying to live with greater awareness. Now I never leave without saying “I love you,” Now I notice each time I am with my family. Now I call more often, and I remember that angry separation is not something that is worthy of life. Better by far to let go and forgive.

 

We think one of our cats may have cancer. We'll probably know next week. I find myself looking for her all the time now. She wants to be in my lap a lot; I used to note that and think about how she gets cat hairs all over me – she sheds like crazy. Instead, now, though, that doesn't occur much to me. Instead I am focused on making her happy, on hoping she feels that I love her and she has made a wonderful difference in my life. But see, that has been true of the last 9 years, and only now is it the dominant feature of my experience of her. This is why we should invite death into our lives, why we should acknowledge as a part of life. I have a new quote magnet in my office now. It says, “relate to each person you meet as if they will die tonight at midnight. Offer them whatever comfort and grace you would if you knew they were dying, for they are.”

 

It is really a whole other way of living. Some, on hearing it, may think it sounds morbid. It really isn't. Because acknowledging death isn't some kind of Dicksonian mediation on the grave. It is bringing into awareness all that matters in life, all the things that we truly value, all the depths that we want to love. Sadly, these most important things are the things we put off for some other day, sometime when we will have more time. We expect to reconcile with one another “one day,” only what if one day never comes, because death gets there first?

 

It isn't so much a race to finish your bucket list by tomorrow as it is a reminder that, as the Sanskrit prayer says,                             Look to this day:

 

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth,

The glory of action,

The splendour of achievement

Are but experiences of time.

 

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow is only a vision;

But today well-lived, makes

Yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day.

 

 

Today, I invite you into a practice of remembering your death, and asking yourself what, therefore, of your life? If you have a partner, talk to her or him about your death, and theirs. Talk about the deaths of those you love: why would their loss matter? How would you or they like to be remembered? What would you still like to do in this life, or say? What still needs healing or release? These are conversations that matter. They can be difficult or frightening at first, but in time, they will, if you will, lose some of their sting and instead, all the aliveness of life will be the center of such conversation.

 

I want to end the talking part here, and invite you into a mediation. In honor of Samhain, in recognition of the cycles of life and death and life again, in celebration that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed, let's center ourselves for a metaphorical journey to sunless shores, for a time, too, of remembrance for all those we have said goodbye to.

 

Meditation