Thursday, December 3, 2015

Advent 5: ALPHA AND OMEGA



Yesterday there was a wasp making its way up our staircase at home; he looked drunk.    
I tried to lift him out of danger from hurrying feet, but as I stooped from my great height (scraping 5’2”) he summoned his last strength and flew feebly off. 

There was a dead lady bug this morning  at the base of our comforter (a real one, not one of those faux orangey ones).  Tidy.  Legs all tucked up under her shell.  Ready for whatever was coming next.

The other day one of those prehistoric-looking bugs that carries its shield on its back was climbing up my office window, moving in painful slow motion, so I gently scooped him onto a piece of paper and tucked him outside in a big pot with a decorative blue spruce; that way he could enjoy being in the natural world in his last hours.  Alice to the rescue.  My husband Tom observed dispassionately, “You do realize he came in here to die in comfort?”

Death.  It's everywhere.


Today would be my brother-in-law Chris’s 54th birthday.  He passed on eleven years ago. 

My mom’s birthday is a week from today; she died at 91 this past May.

Birth and death.    


Jesus is born.  In a dream Joseph is warned the infant is in danger, so the holy family flees to Egypt.  Matthew’s gospel tells us that when Herod is balked of Jesus, he slaughters the babes “in and around Bethlehem” instead.

Death and birth. 


Yesterday Claudia Chapman wrote that she had 
a run in last winter with a lengthy illness which, quite literally, took my breath away, led me to think about the afterlife in a more intense fashion. You'd think after all these years of contemplation that I would be comfortable in my beliefs wouldn't you? It turns out that I'm not; not at all. In fact, I was pretty scared.

Claudia goes on to describe a teacher in grade school choosing the crayon color that she (Claudia) was to use when coloring in the “class calendar square” for the day.  Claudia accepted the teacher’s choice, but secretly resented it.   
If I learned anything at all on that day in first grade, if I'm just handed a peach crayon and told to color in the sky one day, I hope I'll say ‘please, I'd like to pick my own colors if you don't mind.’

Six months ago I had a heart attack and bypass surgery.  My cardiologist told me to expect grief to come calling. I figured he was just a pessimist, but he was right.  Contemplating your own death up close and personal is a brand new animal. Albus Dumbledore claimed death is but the next great adventure to the well-ordered mind but my own experience was a lot messier than that.  Like Claudia’s, it included fear.  Even panic.  And the gift?  Each precious moment.     

In Word from Wormingford, the Rev. Ronald Blythe clambers gingerly down an impossibly steep hill to the front door of a parishioner, an ancient and formidable lady named Dorothy Sewart.  

 Being told at twenty-five (by some ‘tom-fool doctor’) that she had not long to live, she decided to live recklessly and was continuing to live even more recklessly at eighty-five. (p. 7)

A soul, the good reverend opined, living entirely unto herself.  

Why does it take a death sentence to teach us how to do that?

Advent: endings and beginnings. 


Jesus’ “first coming”--is front and center, but his “second coming” hovers close behind.  The church readings now include the "end times” or the "last days.” And those are some scary readings. 

But amid all the signs and symbols and prognostications is some very excellent advice about living "between times."  I think even Dorothy Sewart would approve. 


Wake up and get with the program.

If you’re afraid, ask for help; it will be given.  Better yet, don't be afraid.

Savor it all, even the hard bits; they have something to teach you.

LOVE extravagantly. 

And, of course--choose your own colors.






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