The past week has been meaningful, sad,
joyous, and thought provoking for me. The week began with the burial of a 58
year old man who died much too soon, continued with the wedding and celebration
of a young couple, very much in love and surrounded by their friends, and ended
when I “called” Bingo at the local nursing home where my 96 year old mother
lives. As my thoughts and feelings of the events of the week swirled around my
head and body, I recalled from my youth the phrase that gives this article its
title: “Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity.” This phrase opened every episode
of the 1961-1966 television medical drama, “Ben Casey.”
I am sad for the too soon death, thrilled and
happy for the young couple and their friends and family, and both happy, and
pensive about the residents of the nursing home and the opportunity I have to
spend time with them, especially my mother who has lived a good, though rough
in spots, life and continues to give me and many others joy and meaning. I am
reminded again that life is truly a gift from God, and that God gives us one
another: parents, friends, lovers, wives, husbands, children and “double first
cousins,” to be our companions on this journey.
As I thought and, yes, prayed about life and
our world, the “good, the bad, and the ugly,” I remember one of my favorite
Books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament for Christians), the book of
Ecclesiastes. The writer, Qohelet, “the Preacher,” is as much philosopher as he
is theologian, and has wrestled with the same questions as I and many others
have. “Why am I here, what is the meaning of life, why do we get sick, why do
we die, can we still be happy?”
I
share with you some of his answers: “For everything there is a season, and a
time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time
to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to
kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a
time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time
to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones
together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time
to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to
throw away; a time to tear, and a time to mend; a time to keep
silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time
for war, and a time for peace.
What gain have
the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be
busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he
has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out
what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there
is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as
they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and
take pleasure in all their toil.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-15)
In the burial worship of the Episcopal Church,
we proclaim: “For to your faithful
people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in
death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.” (BCP,
page 382)
