Is life the incurable disease? The infant is born howling & we laugh, The dead man smiles & we cry, resisting the passage, always resisting the passage, that turns life into eternity. Blake sang alleluias on his deathbed. My own grandmother, hardly a poet at all, smiled as we'd never seen her smile before. Perhaps the dress of flesh is no more than a familiar garment that grows looser as one diets on death, & perhaps we discard it or give it to the poor in spirit, who have not learned yet what blessing it is to go naked? Erica Jong The truth is inside you, and also inside me; you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed. We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. Let your arrogance go, and look around inside. The blue sky opens out farther and farther, the daily sense of failure goes away, the damage I have done to myself fades, a million suns come forward with light, when I sit firmly in that world. I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken, inside "love" there is more joy than we know of, rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds, there are whole rivers of light. The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love. How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies! Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail. The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love. With the word "reason" you already feel miles away. How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy he sings inside his own little boat. His poems amount to one soul meeting another. These songs are about forgetting dying and loss. They rise above both coming in and going out. Kabir as translated by Robert Bly (found in "Who Dies" by Steven Levine)
Having not even reached my 37th birthday, I feel somewhat unqualified to speak on this subject. I expect that many of you could speak much more eloquently on the basis of your experience. So I will try to keep my remarks brief so that you will have a chance to add your own thoughts during the congregational feedback.
Nothing in life is more certain than sickness, old age and death. The moment of conception predicts the final hour to come. All that rises up from the earth must return once more to dust.
Yet how many of us can truly grasp this reality without a shudder of fear and a quickening pulse. The mind resists dwelling on this great truth which feels like a vortex drawing us down to our destruction.
I invite you to join with me in peering over the precipice of impermanence. If we hold hands, none of us will fall over and perhaps we'll be the wiser for daring to see what's there. We won't get any help from the youth culture absorbed in gawking at the icons of innocence and the pleasures of the flesh bronzed at the beach playing in the sun. We won't get any help from the business world that shuns any hint of failure as fortunes are traded in the hope of a profit tomorrow. It takes courage to venture into the dark cave seeking to explore the inner caverns.
The time most of us begin to face the fact that we aren't immortal is when we suffer from an illness or injury that leaves a mark which cannot be removed. Junior High was a stressful time for me and I was frequently ill. My mother became quite concerned about my lack of energy and frequent fevers and repeatedly took me to the doctor who couldn't find anything wrong. I was hospitalized for tests which were inconclusive and discharged. My condition deteriorated. I was hospitalized for a second time. The interns examined me during my admission and questioned my mother, a home economics major, as to whether she was feeding me properly because I was so emaciated. I vividly remember looking out my window into a graveyard beside the hospital and wondering whether this might be the way I would leave the hospital, dying without a name to my disease. My body ached and I wished to escape my misery, to once again play in the sun I saw outside with my friends in my neighborhood.
I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease after exploratory surgery and told there was no cure for this auto-immune disease. The prognosis was not good for most patients. It's a nasty disease which can make you feel like you want to die but it rarely kills anyone directly.
Knowing one has a sentence of misery and knowing the pain a disease can inflict changed me forever. I expect that those of you with chronic illness will also have been faced with the reality of suffering in a way that cannot be escaped. The door to the cell has been shut and the key has been discarded. The disease is now your cellmate. There is no way out.
People usually deal with this situation in one of two ways, often going back and forth between the two. Either they try not to face the reality of their condition and hide from it or they try to look it square in the eye and learn to deal with it. One leads to death and the other to life.
Dealing with a loss inside our skin sneaks up on us and brings up many feelings without any warning. I remember going to the dentist with a tooth sensitive to temperature and being told I'd need a root canal. I am fortunate to have very strong, healthy teeth and I was horrified that one of my pearly whites was going to be killed by having the nerve drilled out and filled with cement. It was that or have it pulled and replaced with a, a, a, horror of horrors , a false tooth! (I doubt I'm going to get much sympathy from this group.) First there was the shock. Then there was anger at all the dentists who didn't see this coming when I had dental insurance, who might have been able to patch the hole before a root canal was required. Then there was the feeling of grief at the loss of my youth. After all, root canals are a sign of growing older. Finally, there was a weariness and a resignation to my fate. I'm sure we all have our own such stories. In the microcosm of a root canal I briefly glanced into the shadow of living.
The process of aging is a series of these little shocks as one's normally strong and supple bundle of nerves, muscle and bone begin to gradually weaken. Today much research is being done on postponing many aspects of the aging process via good nutrition, exercise and stress reduction. Yet the wheel of time cannot be stopped. The graying hair, age spots and wrinkles are a gradual process that can be dealt with day by day. But the health crises are the shocks that shake us up.
When a doctor reports to us we have heart disease or cancer, the faint shadow in the background suddenly looms large and threatens to engulf us. The progression of a disease by inches eroding our mental acuity, forcing us to submit to the medical gauntlet, robbing us of our life savings grinds us down relentlessly. The uncertainty of what will happen next frays us at the edges.
What can be hardest of all are the waves of hopelessness and despair which wash over us holding us under the water while we gasp for breath. The free-floating body that was for so long a source of delight and pleasure becomes a strait jacket restricting any escape. The mind grasps desperately for a lifesaver, then goes limp in resignation to its fate.
The actual loss itself often isn't as heavy as the process of losing it. While witnessing the decline of seeing and hearing in one's own body, it's interesting to consider the lot of those who never had their hearing or sight. Many who are born deaf are quite happy to remain so even though surgery might restore their hearing. Many deaf parents actually hope for deaf children. People who are born blind often don't miss seeing at all because they don't know what they are missing. And if their eyes are opened, they are not pleased with what they see. Dr. Oliver Sachs describes the case of a man, blind most of his life, who had his sight restored. His initial euphoria wore off after a few months as he struggled to learn how to see - a process that was extremely taxing and burdensome on his mind. Eventually he gave up and stopped using his eyes, trusting his sense of touch more than his sight. Our sight may not be as precious as we think.
What many of us fear is the loss of control over our lives. We don't want someone else telling us what to eat, when to sleep, changing our clothes and diapers like a baby. Something in us resists being a burden on another and thinks we only have value as a person if we can in the words of the toddler, "do myself".
But at an even deeper level than fear of dependency is the fear of losing one's identity. I like the label minister and would be quite disturbed if I lost my voice and couldn't sing or preach. I would be very unhappy if I could no longer read or type or drive a car. These activities are integral to my identity. If my thinking were so disturbed that I could no longer meditate, I would likely sink into despair. This process of being pared down is especially evident in Alzheimer's patients as they gradually lose their minds. Each loss of memory or ability is an erosion of the self. During the aging process, the losses of function and ability feel like little deaths of our identity.
These are the challenges of aging. As researchers are discovering, much of the suffering of old age is really a mask for malnutrition, drug side effects, and the accumulated damage of disease and abuse. The body is remarkably resilient even past the century mark, retaining its ability to heal. What declines naturally is the capacity to fight disease rather than the ability to do so. Because of improved diet and health care, many of us are going to be around a lot longer than our parents!
But even if we live longer, death must come even to the tallest mountain as it is ever so slowly worn down by the wind and the rain. For many of us, it will not be quick nor painless but a series of slips down the slope of physical decline. We are left with the question: Is there any value to us in the loss of our senses?
As the senses begin to cloud, the information which bombards us every waking moment slows down. With the calming of the outer stimulation, can come a turn inward to explore the inner realms of the mind. In the quiet can come a chance to sort through the baggage of a lifetime to see what is worth keeping and what is worth discarding to lighten the load. The urge to simplify unburdens the mind of its many cares and concerns.
As an outer veil descends across the stage of our life, scenes from the past come to the front. The joys and sorrows of a lifetime come to visit and dance before our inner eye. Some of these memories will bring joy and delight. When I have done a good deed or accomplished some worthy goal, I think with satisfaction that I have stored away a wonderful memory for old age. Yet not all the pictures are pleasant, and painful memories can return to haunt us. This is an opportunity to become a peace-maker with that memory and search for a path to forgiveness and reconciliation. Parents, former mates and wayward children become main characters in this inner theater. The anger of a lifetime, covered over with activity and distraction, cannot be avoided now and pleads for resolution.
What I'm describing here is a process of emptying ourselves and letting go. This whittling down which happens in aging reveals just how much we are more than we think we are. We are more than our titles. We exceed the label husband, wife, lover, parent, leader, volunteer, teacher, helper and friend. We are more than skin and bones, hair and fingernails. We intuitively sense that there is something more to us which animates these arms and legs.
There was a woman named Mary who was languishing in the hospital, suffering through the final stages of bone cancer in great pain. Those of you who have had the experience of an enormous amount of pain will agree that pain doesn't do much for one's sociability. This was the case for Mary, who was very irritable and lashed out at all the nurses and her visitors. Her waking experience was a torment she couldn't escape, for sleep did not come easy if at all. She was experiencing what for most of us would probably be our worst fears of terminal illness.
Although her nursing staff knew she was dying, the hostility they experienced from her made them not want to be her support. The few friends she did have didn't visit very often and even that tapered off. Mary was left alone with her pain, fearing death just as much as her miserable life.
One night she lay in agony and a thought came into her head. The image of a Indian woman in the throes of childbirth entered her thoughts. Then the image of an African woman in the final stages of terminal illness. Suddenly she felt connected to these women and to all the women around the world who were suffering. She no longer felt alone and isolated in her hospital bed. In some grace-filled way, she felt a connection with the rest of humanity which transformed her spirit. Mary explained that at the moment she saw these women, she felt as if she were one with them. The experience changed her in a way she couldn't explain.
The pain didn't go away. The progression of her disease continued unabated. But Mary was renewed as a human being. She became kinder, gentler and more friendly with the nurses. She asked to share her room with another patient who was dying. There was a lightness to her presence that the nursing staff had not seen before. Instead of being a drag on their energy she began returning something to them through her appreciation of their work. The nurses began to linger by her bedside, feeling a sense of refreshment in her company.
Our value as human beings is not limited by what we can do and what we can give. Receiving graciously from others can create meaning for us. I know some people who have been care-givers to the elderly who have felt tremendously enriched and their heart taught by the experience.
I relate this story of Mary not to convince you that dying of bone cancer is good for the spirit. Many die of this disease with agony etched across their face. The train ride of aging has only one destination, sort of like the Amtrak car-train to Florida, as a matter of fact.
The point is that we just don't know what is in store for us at any place along the way. And the good, valuable experiences of life may yet occur in the final hours that make all the pain and suffering worthwhile. The value of one's life cannot be measured only by work accomplishments achieved or pleasures enjoyed. Great things can happen when one approaches the final days. A reconciliation may occur with an estranged brother or sister that brings a long overdue restoration of love. As the divisions of our identity break down, internal recognition and reconciliation can occur. We can gradually begin to experience the part of ourselves which is ageless and is untouched by our pain. With every breath can come greater inner knowledge and understanding.
Being alive is an unconditional adventure. From the first few hours trying to figure out where momma's nipple is and how it works to the release of the last breath, each moment is full of experience. At each step some of it will be pleasant and some of it will be unpleasant. This will be just as true at 10 months as it is at 10 or 100 years. The quality of experience will be different, no doubt, but the process of experiencing is the same. In fact, to return to the mind of a child perhaps makes this more clear. The grace, the unearned cosmic assistance, drags us out of the past, pulls us back from the future and brings our attention to rest in the present moment. This grace is built into our universe and is always available calling us to the truth. In the blood red rose or the crash of thunder or the orange pink light of a sunrise, we are called to celebrate what is happening now, for it is the only time we have. The old and the young can rejoice together, resting in the present moment, witnessing the wonders of life, letting go of separation and difference as they recognize each other as just two masks for the same life pulse.
Copyright (c) 1995 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, All Rights Reserved