used to hold back because I feared I might lose my security or status. A counsellor advised me to visualize the worst scenario that could happen to me. I did so. Then he challenged me to face that worst scenario. I did so. Having faced it, I became willing to go through with it. Even though the worst scenario did not occur, facing it set me free to live fully in any scenario.
It is like that with life. Death stalks us as an unconscious paralyser, even when we are young. If we face this worst scenario of death now, it frees us to live at our maximum throughout our lives.
If we live fully, we shall die fulfilled.
If we are champions in life, we shall be champions in death.
DEATH PUTS LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
You may think you can get away with anything, that nothing can touch you, not even death. This ability to get away with things may seem to be your pride and glory.
The truth is, you will have to submit to death as surely as seed, once it is fully grown as wheat, is cut down and ground into flour. ECHOING ISAIAH 28
The prophet Isaiah believed God was speaking along these lines to ‘successful’ people who never gave a thought to anything or anyone else.
It is better to sow seeds of wheat rather than wild oats now, so that these will bring a good harvest in the future. Only so will the harvest of our lives be a good experience.
What you sow, you reap. What you give out, you receive back.
Living our life in the light of eternity gives us perspective. It sorts out our priorities.
WHEN FACED, DEATH BUILDS VALOUR
A parent whose baby died said this: ‘Our baby’s death made me realize how thin and fragile are the surface things of life which we rely upon. Our baby’s death made me less tolerant of arrogance. It made me value respect.’
A daring hit-and-run robber named Moses, who had killed people in pursuit of his crimes, reformed his life and lived as a hermit in the desert. He became a soul friend to young people, who joined him in the desert.
One day his desert brothers learned that an armed band was on its way to loot their dwellings and leave them for dead. They urged that everyone should make a quick escape.
‘I’ll stay here,’ Moses said. ‘I have waited so long for this day. My death will be a fitting reminder of Jesus’ saying, “Those who use the sword shall die by the sword.”’
In fact, the murderers arrived before any of them could escape. Seven brothers were killed.
There was one brother, however, who was not in the hut with them. He hid under some palm fronds and observed how they died. He saw seven crowns, each one coming to rest on the head of a brother.
Olympic athletes who know that a medal awaits the winner go all out. To know that there is a crown stirs us to valour – to good deeds, heroic acts, unstinting service, and to the noble bearing of suffering.
Deep inside every human being there is an ache. We can try to drown it in restless activity, drug it with addictive substances, or isolate it by putting up defences. If we do this, our life becomes sound and fury, signifying nothing.
One philosopher describes this ache as ‘the existential loneliness’. This ache may become acute when someone close to us dies, or in the season of falling leaves and encroaching dark, or when we leave behind some familiar part of our lives, or when we find ourselves alone.
It may even throb when something triggers a sense of mystery – we fall in love, we give birth to a child, we observe a glory of creation, we witness a tragedy on our TV screen.
Perhaps we have a strong desire to hold on to some special feeling or experience, yet deep down we know that this is as futile as pretending that a snapshot can be the reality of every morning after.
Some never recognize the ache for what it is. The reason for this ache, in the words of one writer, is that ‘in the middle of life we are in death’. We want to achieve, to possess so much. A capacity for life seems at times without limit. Yet we know deep down that nothing will last. It will all fade away.
Our days are like grass.
We flourish like a flower of the field.
The wind passes over it and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
PSALM 103:15,16
That is the ache. The ache is there as a ‘prompt’. It prompts us to accept our mortality. Only when we accept that we shall lose it all will we be free to live fully, not as a right, but as a gift.
In 1997 John O’Donohue wrote a book entitled Anam Cara which became a bestseller. Anam cara is the Gaelic for ‘soul friend’. The soul friend of his book is not a person, it is death. O’Donohue writes:
Death is the great wound in the universe, the root of all fear and negativity. Friendship with our death would enable us to celebrate the eternity of the soul which death cannot touch… 1
Continually to transfigure the faces of your own death ensures that at the end of your life your physical death will be no stranger, robbing you against your will of the life that you have had. You will know its face intimately. Since you have overcome your fear, your death will be a meeting with a lifelong friend from the deepest side of your nature.
Death can be understood as the final horizon. Beyond there, the deepest well of your identity awaits you. In that well, you will behold the beauty and light of your eternal face.
Benjamin Franklin understood death in this way:
A man is not completely born until he is dead … We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us, while they afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or in doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes, and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance, and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way. 2
A great nineteenth-century Russian spiritual director, Ivanov Macarios, wrote to a widow:
I thank you having revealed to me the sadness of your griefstricken heart; a great radiance comes over me when I share with others their sorrow. Complete, perfect, detailed compassion is the only answer I can give to your tender love of me that has led you, at such a time, to
