The Unity and Beauty of Life

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.