Light and shadow...

As I continue to read Let Your Life Speak, I am amazed over and over again by Parker Palmer's writing. He has such a way of expressing things that are, honestly, hard for most of us to express...and he does so with extraordinary eloquence. He is an enormously gifted communicator, and his gifts have been life-giving for me during this last week. Ironically, even though I am experiencing his work as life-giving, the topic of the chapter I've been reading is death...he is talking about the fears that exist within all of us, and particularly in this section, fears that exist within leaders...some of them I relate to, others not so much...but his discussion of how we fear and even deny the reality of death struck me as profound on a number of levels.

Let me start with the end first...in honor of my lifelong habit of preferring to read magazines from the back forward, and to read the ending of many books before I get there, because I am simply too impatient to wait for a story to play out...

The end: The gift we receive on the inner journey is the knowledge that death finally comes to everything--and yet death does not have the final word. By allowing something to die when its time is due, we create the conditions under which new life can emerge.

So, the end is the good news...and a very Christian idea, at that...death does not have the final word...

But in order to get the full import of the principles at hand, we have to look at the beginning as well, and that entails an honest assessment of the human tendency to try and keep things...all things...alive...well beyond their apppointed time for being. Parker says that we sometimes keep things on "life support to accomodate the insecurities of a [person] who does not want anything to die on his or her watch. Within our denial of death lurks fear of another sort: the fear of failure..." How very true this is, at least for me.

I have precisely zero giftedness for anything scientific, and yet, I can very much appreciate Parker's next analogy: "A good scientist does not fear the death of a hypothesis, because that 'failure' clarifies the steps that need to be taken toward truth, sometimes more than a hypothesis that succeeds (emphasis mine)." In the final analysis, I take some comfort from the knowledge that death does not have the final word, and that perhaps, the death of a failed hypothesis can yield even greater things than a hypothesis that succeeds.

I haven't spoken of it in recent days, but the process of sitting with my Mom through her days of physical decline sends me a constant message that death is inevitable, and I can do nothing about it, or for her, to protect her from it. Honestly, it is very hard to see the silver-lining during such difficult days...but as a Christian, if I stake my life upon the claims of Christ, I have to say, "Death does not have the final word," for my Mom, or for any other part of my life where something must be laid to rest.

Beyond the grave, beyond the clouds...there is light, and somehow, the light has the final word.