Part 2. A Journey Through the Aperture of Death

The greatest journey to be made is one that all of us will make and it is a journey that we have little input into the circumstances of. Death is especially frightening to those of us in the Western world. Eastern peoples are more inclined to see it as part and parcel to living, not the ultimate foe that we have come to view it as here in the west.

Yet death can be a gentle experience here in the West. “Afternoon Tea” describes the most gentle of passings. An elder saint stood watch over four of her family members as they passed over to the other side. Especially poignant was her experience of quietly making tea for her son and telling him of her love for him and turning to find he had gone over; just like that. It seemed so easy.

On a clear February day over Texas seven champions of the skies were moments from reunions with their families when their chariot disintegrated at 17,000 miles an hour. In “Contrails” we are reminded of how even in the face of death we can be doing great things.

“Transformations” describes the passing of a dear friend to his eternal home after a tortured journey that included a double lung transplant. Christian novels enjoyed by Cooper, his widow, and myself became non-fiction for Cooper when he passed over.
“Input” provides a somewhat acerbic view of our frenetic world with its information-overload. Yet there is promise of a quiet journey to a new world of peace and serenity, a place of no more pain or tears.

A young man I had the good fortune to mentor for half of his life had the bad fortune of dying fifty years too soon. This gift gentle soul made the world a much better place for his brief sojourn here. “My Favorite Explorer” captures his spirit of inquiry and learning.

“Living a Lifetime Over a Long Weekend” describes my various encounters with death or tragedy in the space of several days. Even in the midst of all this evidence was forthcoming that new life is always to be found in our midst. Hope is to be found in the most subtle ways. A sparrow building its nest on a mausoleum wreath brought warmth to a cold gray day in the cemetery.


Afternoon Tea

England is a place rich in ancient castles, country manor houses, inspiring cathedrals, grand museums, and botanical delights. The climate in England is quite suited to the propagation of magnificent flower gardens – cool and very rainy with a lot of cloud cover. This tends to promote the virtual immortalization of blossoms of impossible variety and color; blooms that last six weeks in the United Kingdom might last only six hours here in the American South where intense August sunlight can wither them to brown wisps of memory in short order. It is beyond counting, the number of times I have waged war against the South Carolina sun to keep my impatiens from premature incineration. Yet, there is a down side to the British climate so well suited to long-lived floral delights. The dense cloudy skies and continuous rain tend to depress rather than delight humans.

Being an industrious lot, the British have long adopted pleasing indoor activities to take their minds off the inclement weather. One of these interior rituals is afternoon tea, a time out when hot tea and cream is served with some fine warm pastry – a scone, cobbler, or other sweet dessert. Added to these are good conversation and a nice warm fireplace. Speaking from personal experience, it is a most civilized amenity of life. The practice of taking afternoon tea never really caught on over here on the west side of the Atlantic. Americans tend to live too fast for such things and our weather does not usually keep us confined behind murky window panes.

One does find occasional exceptions on this side. Extreme old age and disability have ways of slowing one down to indulge in the small simple pleasures of life. The big grand adventures are now off limits. Phillip Simmons wrote in his poignant book, Learning to Fall, of the blessings of living an imperfect life – in his case a life being whittled away by the certain uncertainties of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He has figured out that the small simple things in life are really the ones that give life color and texture, not the big noteworthy exploits. Fortunately, he was a professor of English and writing and he has left to the public domain a fine collection of essays about his lessons in what matters most in life. I think his essays should be required reading for the majority of us who miss out on true living because we are so intent on climbing the ladder of success, not realizing it has been leaning against the wrong wall all along. The whole American consumer culture is hanging on a ladder leaning against a wall of uncertain strength at best.

Last Sunday afternoon about 3 PM a dear friend, Elva M Rice, who has long called me “my second boy,” was making tea for her quadriplegic son, Ron. Ninety-one years and the pitfalls of aging have conspired to keep her in a wheelchair and making tea is a major effort for her. If the truth be known, everything except prayer is a major effort for her. Being a quadriplegic for thirty-seven years means much of life is lived in an air bed. In this case, these two experts on the simple things had long adapted to living out their lives in a single large room that functioned as bedroom, living room, and kitchen. From his nearby bed, Ron told his mother that he loved her very much and that is was time for him to go. No big deal for most of us fast-moving Americans, but these two had long since stopped going places, except for expeditions to the hospital during medical crises. Saying “It’s time for me to go” was a big deal. It proved a much bigger deal when Ron’s dear mother turned away from the stove after having also just spoken aloud of her love for him. She saw that he had, in fact - gone. Just like that. He had made that infinite journey to the place from which no one sends e-mail or postcards.

What happened was perhaps the most civilized enactment of a tea ceremony that ever took place on earth - a frail ancient mother telling her son of her love for him, while making a bit of tea in the aureate sunlight of an early March afternoon, his having permission to take quiet leave of a tortured life. Tea ceremonies in Japan are a legendary part of the culture; even more so than in Britain, yet none compared to this one acted out in a battered old kitchen where the only ritual implements used were a burned pot, a rough old mug and a flexible plastic straw. Even the rodents living in the ceiling probably took pause.

This house has seen at least four quiet passings to that far place. Ron’s mother lavished love on her invalid preacher husband for eight years before he slipped over. Before that, she loved his brother to safety on the other shore. Before that, she loved her daughter Mary, of a mere thirty-one years, over to infinity. This decaying old house has proven to be a gracious way station for four very tired souls ready for the rest of a lifetime.

What made this tea ceremony a quiet civilized event, rather than a great tragedy was the long-standing faith of several generations. I have always been astounded at how Mrs. Rice always says, “The Lord has been so very good to me.” She obviously knows something most of us don’t know. She lives in a disintegrating house in a disintegrating neighborhood, gets a pension of $54.10 from the textile mill, has seen the passage of four in her immediate family and most of her twelve siblings. She has been years in a wheelchair, doesn’t have any of what the American culture says we need for full successful lives, yet she knows and declares the Lord has been good to her. Her ladder is obviously leaning against a wall most of us don’t even know about. And she is quite able to climb it despite being bound to a wheelchair by an exquisitely frail body that has long betrayed her.

Unlike flowers that can be incinerated by the torrid heat of the summer sun, Ron, his sister, his father, and his uncle have all found eternal life in a land where the climate is perfect, where nothing withers and nothing dies. The faith of this faithful mother has seen them all safely through the hardest voyage of life. This same faith will see this trusting saint through herself. At nine-one she knows it will not be long until it’s time for her to go. She is not afraid; in fact, she is eager with anticipation to make the journey. I only hope she doesn’t do it just yet. There are still some of us who need to sit at her feet and get some lessons on the things that matter in life.

"Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.”

March 20
Anderson, South Carolina


Contrails

It is the 2nd of February with grand cerulean skies and 67 degrees. I have all the doors open with a fine breeze blowing out the stagnance of winter that has accreted in the house during the past three months of seasonal darkness. The sky is crisscrossed with contrails, which have always inspired and enthralled me, giving me the inspiration for some of my best poems. I derive grand pleasures from ruminating what dreams people were being carried to on them, especially the vermillion ones at sunset. Because I live one hundred thirty miles east of the busiest airport in the world, most twilights afford a view of as many as a dozen of these at a time since that hundred and thirty miles gives jets time to climb seven miles or more above me into the last gleaming remains of the day.

As of yesterday morning, however contrails just aren’t the same anymore. We all watched one as it pulsated in the cobalt Texas sky and split into multiple streams at Mach 18 yesterday - another one of those seminal images has been etched into our memories, only too soon. It proved to be a harbinger of doom as America and Israel lost seven of their best, just sixteen minutes before a happy reunion with family and those that dreamed and dared to do big things, impossible things.

Tragically, both of our countries are becoming expert at suffering hideous losses. One can only hope that one day we will all be able to simply picnic on warm fields of spring grass rather than search out our fallen comrades and the detritus of their once gleaming chariots and towers.

February 2
Anderson, South Carolina


Transformations

For some eleven years now, I have been part of a tiny informal book club, consisting only of myself, Lynda, and her husband Cooper. Fortunately for me, Lynda was and continues to be a voracious reader. For some years Lynda and I were the only two members of the club. We both worked in the same hospital for a decade, and one of my favorite things to do was disappear from my office and wander to her warren of rooms in the Radiation Oncology department.

As you might imagine, Radiation Oncology is serious business with high stakes, and often the stories did not have happy endings for the patients who experienced the raw power of decaying atoms flung at them from an assortment of accelerators. Time-outs to swap books were a grand relief from the heady business of isotopes and tumors. I usually came out the winner on these rendezvous in that Lynda was probably the best customer of the three local Christian bookstores and I was usually the sole beneficiary of her acquisitions after she read these.

After some years, one day Cooper decided to try reading one of our favorite authors, this after having boasted proudly of not having read any kind of book in decades. I couldn’t recall which book it was that got his attention but he was instantly hooked on Christian fiction in its several forms. Lynda immediately recalled which one it was, Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind. From then on he left us in the dust, reading several books a week. Absolutely amazing was his ability to read an eight-hundred page paperback book without leaving the slightest mark on the covers or the slightest crease in the binding. We never did quite figure out how he did this. The transformation that resulted in his life was even more impressive. It seems that a lot of the creases and wrinkles that had been torn into Cooper’s spirit by the knocks of life were ironed out and healed by the stories we all shared in these mountains of books.

For the next six or seven years we watched this transformation prove permanent, even when it was tested by the severest of challenges, idiopathic interstitial lung disease, a long high falutin’ name for lung failure for which the docs are clueless as to the cause. This disorder sets one up for a very long, slow downward journey into suffocation. One’s consciousness shrinks down to nothing but the next breath. One’s world becomes very tiny, crowded with concentrators, oxygen bottles, and assorted polyethylene tubing. Fortunately, Cooper had an angel living in that tiny world with him who went the thousandth mile to make life bearable for him.

Because of the efforts of Lynda and a cast of hundreds, Cooper experienced the miracle of a double lung transplant this past September, and he was able to return home and bask in the wonderment of life beyond the next breath. Just a couple of days ago, Cooper experienced an even greater transformation. He got a whole new body.

Death is an absolutely universal phenomenon yet it remains a frightening veil to most of us. Last night I watched the film “Star Gate,” a science fiction piece about an ancient gateway found buried in Egypt that allowed one in but a few seconds to transit a million light years of time/space to arrive on another world in another galaxy. What is not science fiction is that those who embrace faith and belief in the redemptive power of the Son of God get to go through a Son Gate rather than a Star Gate. Instead of ending up on a barren desert world with three moons, where every one is a slave in a mining colony, those of faith find themselves sons and daughters of the King of Kings in a place where there is no night, no tears, and the streets made of gold so pure as to be transparent.

When Lynda called to tell me of Cooper’s latest transformation, I told Lynda that for us, the books would still be Christian fiction but for Cooper they were now all non-fiction, a profound new reality no longer bound in the imagination of writers. He no longer needs to worry about creases on the spine, or marks on the covers. His name is written in the Lamb’s book of Life and he has given up the need for mass paperbacks and trade hardbound fiction. Lynda and I will keep reading, knowing that one day we too will graduate to non-fiction. For those of us with faith it does not have to be a scary transition. We won’t be left behind. Cooper wasn’t.

In the best selling non-fiction work ever written, we are told,

“Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, the hearts of man have not even imagined the things I have prepared for you … If you just believe, then all things are possible.”

February 8
Anderson, South Carolina


Input

The films “Short Circuit” and “Short Circuit2” describe the playful antics of a highly intelligent robot that is addicted to input. Viewers are filled with laughter as they watch the urban mechanical capers of this ferrous critter seeking input of all kinds. Alas, we space-age viewers are getting our lives filled with input that does not create happy gales of laughter; rather we are experiencing an angst of a type we have not seen before in human history. Throughout history people really did experience ignorance as bliss. Imagine if hapless villages in northern Europe had been given days and weeks of warning that their small peaceable worlds were about to be destroyed by marauding Goths or Vikings. Imagine if we knew, as Jesus did, the nature and timing of our deaths. The growing horror would be beyond comprehension. The element of surprise has the ability of deferring anxiety and dread, especially in the weak and powerless.

I recall being in the position six years ago of having to tell a mother of the death of a child. I followed this happy mother in my car on the Interstate for about sixty miles, knowing that at the other end of our journey I was going to have to provide her a kind of input that would shatter her equanimity. It did. It was hideous to drive along behind her looking at the back of her head knowing that I was the one appointed to shatter her peace. Knowledge can be a horrible thing.

It is in the nature of my life to be on the Internet regularly as I now maintain my correspondence almost exclusively in this manner and manage my investments on-line. A dark side of the Internet is the ability to get more input than even our mechanized friend could have wanted. For the first time in human history we face a geo-political crisis with the ability to watch every development with a level of detail that would have been unthinkable five or ten years ago. The real time viewing of the destruction of the World Trade Centers made the horrors of the progressive structural collapse of those granite spires more than holographic. I have not been the same since. I was supposed to have been in those towers that fateful week and we were nearly real-time witnesses to the incineration of the Columbia as it fell from the heavens over Texas.

As is my usual practice, I logged on first thing today to check e-mail, hoping to find those touches from dear friends that thicken the veneer of civility just a bit in an ever more hostile world. Alas, all I found were twelve group forwards of crass jokes and a couple of spam from bankrupt airlines offering virtually free travel, desperate for any cash flow whatever. The airline industry is under the siege of terrorism and much of it has filed for bankruptcy protection.

While connected to the planet, I checked on financial markets in thirty countries, only to find that most world markets continue to experience progressive economic collapse, financial metaphors of what happened to the World Trade Center on that fateful Tuesday. I didn’t have the courage to check my own positions. On a daily basis, I encounter people who are falling victim to the progressive failure of their life savings and retirements. A neighbor works the cash register at Wal-Mart and tells me she can see business slowing down. The owner of the local BP service station tells me he has seen a big drop off in his commercial accounts. More and more, bus boys and waiters in fast food establishments are silver-haired senior citizens. Japan has seen the complete loss of all the wealth generated in the past generation. Warren Buffet, the greatest investor of all time, has just stated publicly that he believes derivatives trading will have the effect of being a weapon of economic mass destruction. It destroyed Orange County, the venerable Barings Bank, and nearly took out the US banking system and currency four years ago. He says it is yet to occur.

We live in an era when we have ability to see the six-pound hammer coming down in slow motion on our own personal financial lives, and now we have the ability to see holographic images of the latest hi-tech hammers of the military. One is but three clicks away from viewing the wanton destruction of many of the world’s great cities and cultural treasures. The great Buddhas of Afghanistan are now but jpg files in my hard drive. The Air Force dropped a 21,000-pound bomb on Florida yesterday and celebrated. I saw the crater on my screen minutes ago.

For us mere mortals, input of this kind incinerates peace of mind and causes sleep to flee from us. We were never created to handle this kind of thing. We were created to live simple peaceable lives with those we love and care about, to simply enjoy a good meal and conversation within our communities. Less and less this is proving to be the daily reality for uncounted billions.

Quantum physicists have long since determined that time is not really as we think it to be: a straight linear flow. It can be circular, a point, a line, bi-directional, and all at the same time. We simply don’t have the sensory capacity to comprehend this non-Newtonian view of the universe. Fortunately, the One who created the universe comprehends perfectly the nature of not only the universe but also time/space and human behavior.

Being outside the bounds of linear time, He knew before we lived it out, that the history of humanity would be tortured and troubled. It is for this reason, that the Creator created the ultimate Input into His-story. It is the Input of the Christmas and Easter message that allows me to sleep at night while others celebrate dropping bombs and yet others wipe out economies with derivatives trading. It is that message that allows a mother to keep getting out of bed after the death of a child. It is that message that allows a dear friend with catastrophic disease to experience God’s grace as “being able to do the next thing.” It is that message that allows a mother to make some sort of sense of the world and to keep a faint flicker of hope alive when she finds out her boys are mentally handicapped and must face radical brain surgery just to stay alive.

On that fateful Friday centuries ago, the most profound Input of all time was nailed to a Roman cross and erased from the hard drive of humanity, or so the Romans and Jewish leaders thought. On Sunday morning a couple of women arose to find the Creator of it all had another plan – he had an un-erase program that gives little girls in new dresses a reason to celebrate the glory of Easter. The real Input had been restored to our troubled world with a promise.

“They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

March 12
Seaton Devon


My Favorite Explorer

If I were eight years old and standing in front of my third grade class I would start out my speech with a nervous voice “My Favorite Explorer.” Alas, we are far beyond the third grade in every conceivable way and are gathered here to share in the heaviness of the greatest journey we are ever called to make in life.

Daniel Boorstin is the best-selling author who has written two dozen vast epics of exploration. Perhaps his best-known one is The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. Daniel Boorstin should have come here to our little town in the northwest corner of South Carolina and he would have found one of the world’s truly great explorers. Unfortunately, when Boorstin was writing the manuscript for this vast epic, Harold was but one year old.

I have done a bit of exploration myself, which has taken me to thirty-nine countries and through five careers and seven universities, but I never became what one could rightly call an explorer. At fifty-one I still am not an explorer. Harold was truly an explorer by the time he was ten, even though he had barely been beyond the city limits of Anderson by then.

Ten years ago I was out in March trimming the holly bushes of the house that I had bought perhaps two weeks before. My house happened to be next door to an explorer. At the time the two houses now between us were still merely concepts in a developer’s mind. I remember standing up on my aluminum ladder muttering unrepeatables as I tried to reach the top of those prickly bushes, which grow faster than Chinese bamboo.

A slight ten-year old boy with vibrant red hair came up to the bottom of my ladder and asked if he could help me with the thorny trimmings that were accreting on the ground around me. That was the kind of gentle spirit Harold was. As we were trimming and hauling, with absolute sincerity, he asked me if I could tell him about the nature of the universe. He pressed really hard, wanting to know about the evolution of stars, the formation of planets, the compression of time. I knew I had a live one of the highest order. Fortunately, I had studied astronomy and was able to avoid humiliation during our first meeting. During the next ten years, he would never take a simplistic answer for any question about anything from me or anyone else. That is the nature of explorers.

In the next ten years, Harold and I shared countless explorations. We walked assorted dogs, read a million books and argued about conclusions, did a bit of dumpster diving, carpentry in my shop, even some expansive climbing and hiking in the mountains. Our last physical adventure was merely to the Winn-Dixie on a Friday night where he assisted me in buying the food for a five-course retirement dinner planned for the next night. Harold was to be at that dinner, as he so enjoyed heated conversation with my retiring friend over happy meals at what came to be called the Three Bears House. I remember how pleasing it was having him with me in the grocery pushing the cart for me. It seemed luxurious to have him pushing. I have always had to push my own cart up until now. He even made a long catch as I threw a garlic clove across the produce section to him. Crème of pumpkin soup calls for fresh garlic.

I taught him how to really play chess. I thought I was hot stuff, beating a little kid. I should have been paying better attention. For a good long time I always won. The last time we played chess, he took his queen and two other major pieces from the board before we started the game, and yet he pounded me into check mate in a matter of minutes. Harold told me that there are 10 to the 120th power possible moves in chess. He was well on his way to exploring which of those would humble the likes of me. His last night with us, Harold was at my house on the Internet, showing me end-game variations of the grand masters. I was not real excited about being mated in four brisk moves.

It took eighteen months, but I finally finished building Harold the ultimate chessboard. Explorers need sea-worthy ships to find the edge of the world. Harold needed something more than a 12-inch cardboard playing surface with small plastic pieces to continue his exploration of those 10 to the 120th possibilities in chess. I found perhaps ten books on chess variations as I quietly looked through his room that first awful day after he left our dock.

Harold journeyed to places of which I have no knowledge. One day he decided to explore Johann Sebastian Bach. He simply sat himself down at the piano and over time made Bach’s Goldberg Variations part of his being, part of his essence. Harold had gone with me over to Boulevard Baptist just after 9-11 for a community meeting where there happened to be a magnificent grand piano. After the meeting, he sat down at that piano and in stunned awe we watched as he took us to parts unknown.

Harold had a way with paintbrushes and pastels, but put a pencil in his hand and give him a good piece of water-marked paper - stand back. I consider myself a decent novice painter, but with a pencil and paper Harold was in the deep end of the pool. My visual explorations are still on the steps in the baby pool by comparison. Yet, Harold never failed to, with all sincerity, compliment me in very specific detail about how my own fledgling efforts at painting were progressing. The last time he did so was on his last Friday night about 10 PM after we had unloaded the groceries and were on the Internet. The fact that I am painting now is due primarily to Harold’s encouragement over our years of exploration.

Harold took me to other places unknown to me, ones you cannot reach by car, piano, or paint brush. He took me into the inner thought of the Vietnamese Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh. My now very worn copy of the little book, Peace in Every Step, was a gift from Harold three years ago. He read it six times. I have read parts of it dozens of times. I told Harold many times this book has been one of the most important books I have ever read. Despite my own conservative Christian orientation, there have been times when I have had massive struggles on my journey and Harold understood these struggles better than most therapists. Harold knew the great pearls in Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings would help me. They still do in a profound way. Harold could always see the good in people and in their own unique ways of seeking spiritual enlightenment.

A year ago in February I was out in the front yard trimming two very large crepe myrtle trees when Harold came up and asked me if he could help move the massive pile of cuttings to my compost pit. Harold always took great delight in helping me while I was in the yard. On that cold gray winter morning he took me to a place that only parents can really know. I, having never married, would have never known anything whatever of the joy of parenting if it had not been for Harold. I was again up on the same ladder of nine years earlier when Harold simply told me that he considered me his “chosen father.” I nearly fell off the ladder as I teared up and choked up. I suddenly had an inkling of the great joy parents experience when they see their children achieve important milestones. Harold took me to a place I would have never dreamed of getting to go. If it ever happens that I become a parent, I will owe it to Harold.

Every true explorer has to have a benefactor. Columbus would never have made it to America without the financial and moral support of the Queen back in the Old World. The same could be said of all the ancient mariners who sailed the unknown seas. Harold and his sisters had the vast fortune of having not one, but two great benefactors. His dear mother has gone to Wal-Mart every night for far more than a decade in order to allow her three magnificent children to make their own explorations in life. Let it be recorded that our dear Anita loved and loves her children with every part of her being. Let no one doubt that she has done this faithfully without ever wavering, even when life circumstances cast her into class five rapids. I bear ten years of personal testimony to this - exactly half of Harold’s lifetime.

Harold, Rebecca, and Diana have all basked in the ultimate loving benevolence of their dear Aunt Kitty. I have had the great fortune to meet this gentle selfless soul a number of times and the investment she has made in these lives will pay dividends for time beyond measure. I can assure you that these dividends are even accruing in my life through what she has done for these fine children and their dear mother. Harold was Aunt Kitty’s special courier of benevolence into my own life.

Exploration is a team effort. The greatest sea-faring explorers need able loyal crews to hoist the sails and weather the storms. Harold was a great explorer who has taken me to grand places beyond the reach of jet turbines or ocean-going ships. He was able to do so with the incredible crew he had in his mother and dear aunt and many of those in the small church where he found safe harbor when the seas became stormy.

May the life of this gentle young explorer challenge each of us to think about where we are headed in life, to take the time to think about how we can make a better more loving gentle world. Harold wanted that more than anything, even life itself. And so he willingly paid the ultimate price.

April 27
Anderson, South Carolina


Living a Lifetime Over a Long Weekend

Statistics indicate that the most dangerous part of a commercial jet flight is the landing phase. It seems that it is easier and safer to make it up into the sky than it is to come down out of it. In February the world saw the tragic reality of what happens when an attempt to return safely to earth goes awry. Columbia was immolated by the blistering heat of reentry, yet some twenty years earlier Challenger was lost when it attempted to make it up into the heavens. So far, the statistics don’t yield a clear conclusion about the most dangerous aspects of space flight. What we can be certain of is that life in space is a risky business.

I have just had several of my own experiences that indicate life is plenty risky even for those of us that don’t take a seat on top of a solid-fuel rocket. On Thursday, my own attempt to get a mere eight miles up into the sky proved nearly fatal. A large seabird attempting to get about one mile up found its attempt fatal when it made the mistake of getting sucked into the jet turbine just outside my triple-paned Lexan window. Jet turbines are fragile and finicky, and don’t like having six pound objects thrown into them at four hundred miles an hour. They tend to be reactive and disintegrate, sometimes taking the plane attached to them to eternity. Depending on your religious persuasion, I was either rather lucky or rather blessed. The housing of the engine kept the disintegrating turbine from coming through the fuselage like a giant chain saw.

After spending the warmest spring on record on the continent, basking in the best that Europe has to offer, one does not expect on the journey home to be immediately faced with things like mortality, death, and multiple homicide. I sure didn’t expect it when I got on that jet Thursday. I sure didn’t expect to face it again on Friday within hours of my arrival, and yet again on Saturday.

I was advised that a bank robbery had taken place here Thursday, the day I nearly touched eternity myself. Three people were killed and embraced eternity. A professor and his wife visiting the bank and a bank employee were shot dead by the robber. A friend of mine worked for that professor and will have to go into the office the day after tomorrow and tell his colleagues and students about the sudden rupture of their comfortable academic world; one that had seemed so safe and secure. It will be a very long Monday for many on that campus.

Friday, I found myself standing in the exact same parlor of the local funeral home at an open casket placed on the same stand that I had stood in front of three times in the weeks before I left North America. Was this really possible? My circle of friends has been depopulated this year.

Life is a clear window of opportunity framed by mysterious opaque realities – the wonder of birth and the unknown curtain of death. How can it be that things that have happened billions of times have revealed so little of their nature to us? How can it be that on Thursday I was basking in the spectral wonders of Holland’s tulip gardens, and later that day nearly died in the skies above those gardens, yet survived, only to learn that others did not survive a simple journey into the local bank?

I am now here sitting on a cold folding metal chair in a frigid mausoleum with a strong wind blowing through openings in the speckled granite slabs surrounding us. It is one of those harsh gray May days that was supposed to have been spent sometime back in January or February, not here in late May when we are craving a chance to thaw out from winter. This isn’t what I had in mind for a Saturday in the prime of spring, spending a cold leaden day in a cemetery listening to a distraught daughter delivering her own mother’s eulogy.

People facing catastrophic illness develop some special abilities to compensate for functional and emotional losses. Blind people develop enhanced hearing, the ability to get the most out of life in a different way. Sitting on my right side is a dear friend who has been fighting cancer and several other physiologic nightmares for much of her adult life. On the other side of me sits a dear friend who is nine years into bonus time after a brain stem tumor nearly took her out of the seen world and into that opaque region we know nothing about. Both have developed the ability to find the smallest bit of color and wonder in the midst of even the harshest circumstances.

Both noticed that which I did not notice, that life really is more powerful and tenacious than death. I was caught up in blown jet engines, near misses on the interstate, a triple homicide, and now this cold windy farewell. On one of the marble slabs in front of us is a silk flower wreath. Both of my friends observed and eventually pointed out to me the frequent flights of a small sparrow to and from that wreath. In this stone shrine to death, this sparrow was building a nest in those silk flowers and establishing a beachhead for life. Even here in this place, new life would come forth on a warm day in early June.

The flights of this small bird proved a stunning metaphor and reminder of the most cherished promises and proclamations in the Christian scriptures. What did or did not happen inside of that jet engine, what happened inside of that bank, what happened in that mausoleum only confirms what my friends already know deep down in their souls. True security and eternal life are ultimate gifts from God, just for the asking.

“Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Late May, Forest Lawn, South Carolina