The Unity and Beauty of Life
Last week I wrote about the dualistic
life as opposed to life as unity. And
yes, I recognize the irony in this statement.
In a forty-eight hour period just three days after posting that essay,
several things happened in my life that pushed me further away from dualism
(good-evil, right-wrong, saved-lost, I’m right-you’re wrong) toward an awareness
of life in all of its profound, mysterious, challenging, sometimes frustrating
and always powerful beauty and unity.
In that forty-eight hour period my
neighbor was flown to the Cleveland Clinic for a double lung transplant, I
attended a retirement celebration for one of my High School classmates on the
same day that two of our classmates died, and I received a marriage
announcement from two of my (gay) friends in Utah. When I returned home on Friday evening I sat
on my deck looking at the lake and letting this events float around in my
mind. I did not try to make sense of the
apparent dualism: life-death, good-bad, happy-sad of the events or issues. I simply allowed them to form a jigsaw puzzle
in my mind and heart so I could see these things as a tapestry with all the
colors and shapes and sizes of the pieces of life. A life that for all of us, is a gift. A life where we often struggle, where most of
us most of the time do the best we can.
A life in which we can feel blessed and cursed, frustrated and uplifted,
enlightened and confused at one and the same time.
My neighbor, who has been suffering
from a severe lung disease for over two years will be able to be healthier and
more active than he has in a long time.
At the same time, it was the death of a stranger who made this
possible. Is this a case of good and bad,
of joy and sorrow? In a way one could
see it like this, but a holistic vision of life sees the connection of life and
death, the truth in Jesus’ parable that a seed planted in the ground dies, but
by that death produces more life. My
neighbor and his family are joyful and another family is grieving the loss of a
loved one. But, they are also aware that
their loss has given life to many, many other people and brought joy and hope
to them and their families.
As many of us attended the retirement
celebration for our classmate, word spread that two other classmates, lifelong
friends had died. Yes we had mixed
emotions! We were happy for our retiring
friend, and we were sad and prayerful for those who had died. We had known all three of these people since
elementary school, in fact, our retiring friend and I were First Grade
classmates. It was good that we were
together for her retirement, and unplanned we were able to mourn the loss of
our two friends who had died. We were
able to see the vastness of life, the shortness of life and the importance of the
relationships we had shared for over 60 years.
As a class we had been through marriages and divorces, the Viet Nam war
where some had served and others had been war protesters, the birth of children
and grandchildren and the death of children and spouses. We had shared the hopes and dreams of one
another and of our generation, our successes and failures and have found that
life is a gift, a gift to be shared, a gift to be lived on the field and not on
the sidelines. As the Statler Brothers’
song of the same title states: “The Class of 57 Had Its Dreams.” We are not the class of ’57, we are the Class
of ’66, but we too had and have our dreams, and we had and we have each other,
and having each other we have helped one another see the wholeness, the mystery
and the vastness of life. We continue to
learn to cherish this life, to live every day as if it is our last and to share
it lovingly will all those around us.
And finally in this one forty-eight
hour period I was able to celebrate with joy and by mail the marriage of my two
male friends, and their love and commitment.
A few years ago, in fact just a year ago in Utah, they would not have
been able to publically make this commitment to one another. I know there are many people, though fewer
and fewer every day, who still feel that they should not have been able to do
so. Their marriage is for some a remnant
of dualistic thinking, of right and wrong.
For others it is a sign of hope for a future in which all men and women
are created equal. Whatever one believes
about their marriage, it is still very much a part of the beautiful tapestry of
life in which we have all been blessed to be born. To see the pictures on the wedding
announcement, the smiles on the faces of Kevin and Rex and their friends is a
reminder that life is full of joy, that even though we may not understand
everything that happens or everyone who lives on this earth, that we are
inextricably bound together in one “great family:” the human family and the
family of God. As a friend of mine often
reminds me, “we are all sons and daughters of the King.”
The title of this blog is “Change an
Invitation to Life.” Life is constantly
changing, constantly flowing like a river.
We step into that river with our preconceptions, our talents,
relationships, hopes and dreams, and then the river takes us where it will,
brings us into contact with all sorts and conditions of people and leads us
into a life that is more than we could ever ask for or imagine.
