Speaking of life and death
23/03/14 05:21
I think that the weather around here is typical for this time of year. We get a few warm days that really set off spring fever and then it snows. Yesterday was a snowy day and from where I spent much of the day it was really beautiful. The snowflakes drifted down through a nearly windless sky and the moisture content was high enough to make the snow pretty heavy when I was cleaning the driveway in the early afternoon. It continued to snow off and on throughout the afternoon and into the early evening. It is about 10 degrees out there this morning, which is cold enough to keep the snow around for a while, but once again the forecast is for highs near 60 by the middle of the week. The rapid changes in the weather are one of the charming features of the hills, though not everyone appreciates the way that spring teases us around here. Just when you think that you might get out and till the garden the snow covers it up once again. When it does warm up, it takes a few days before the mud dries out anyway when we have the kind of snow we’ve been having.
I’m grateful for the moisture, so I won’t complain about the snow. It is too early to rearrange the tools in the shed. And I try to remain flexible myself. I had planned to fire up the grill and cook outside on Friday, but it wasn’t hard to change my mind and menu plans to cook inside. The grill will wait for a warmer day when I have a few extra minutes.
One thing that is nice about the slow spring is that it allows me to put off some of the outdoor chores that will need to be tackled once good weather is in store. And the snow does a lovely job of covering up the undone work so that I don’t have to worry about it.
The up and down weather seems to suit my mood this Lent as well. The signs of hope seem relatively small. As we near the mid-point of Lent there is no denying that it has been a rough season in the life of our church. We have already had four funerals and I have spent more time with people who are nearing the end of their lives than is typical. It isn’t hard to imagine that we will have more funerals before Easter comes.
Of course people do not control the timing of their deaths and there is nothing inherent in the seasons of the church that makes for more deaths in one season than other. I know that we can have funerals in Eastertide as easily as during Lent. I can remember the deaths of ones in our congregation that have occurred in other seasons. One year we had a death on Christmas Eve just as we were preparing for our celebration of the birth of Christ. Birth and death are often very close in this life. But for those of us who live inside of the cycle of the seasons of the church, Lent provides an opportunity to focus our attention on loss and grief and to understand its role in the lives of everyone.
Here is the amazing, if quite obvious thing: live goes on.
Yesterday I was sitting in front of the windows at hospice house visiting with a friend. It happens that we joined this congregation on the same day. For him it was a return to Rapid City after having been away for some years. For me, it was my first time of living here. In the years that we have know each other he has experienced initial and then subsequent cancer diagnoses. He has had heart bypass surgery. He has seen almost every kind of cancer treatment you can imagine. He has experienced remission and then re-diagnosis. He has become friends with the cancer doctors from having spent so much time with them.
But what I remember most isn’t the doctors or the treatments. I remember working on Habitat for Humanity houses together. We’re both early risers and we used to be the first ones on the job site most days. He’d be sweeping or cleaning up when I arrived with the coffee. We’d sit and drink a cup of coffee and talk about life and the tasks for the day. They were precious times for me. You can learn a lot about life from listening.
Yesterday we were very aware that death is near. The hospice house gives you permission to talk about death. The choices he has made in terms of his care in the past week all are based on the simple fact that he is not able to recover and return to his life. One of the things that he has said to me on both of my last two visits is, “It is a whole new experience.” That is, of course, like many other things he has said over the years, an understatement. Facing your own death is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Our conversation, however, wasn’t about death. We talked about the gray juncos at the feeder and the deer in the yard. We talked about the beauty of the snow on the pine trees. We talked about the Habitat for Humanity house that our church is helping to build this spring and summer. We talked about a house he built in Texas and several on Oklahoma. He explained why the added cost of building a hip roof can provide savings in the long run if it is done right.
There is something inside of us that longs for life and even when we are deeply aware of the reality of death, we can think about it only in limited doses. In a room where there is no fear of death and no one is afraid to speak of its reality, our conversation continued to drift into the stuff of life. The joy of being together is deeper than the reality of death. In Corinthians, Paul asks, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Even though we will all one day die from this life, life continues.
It isn’t Easter yet, but we can’t ignore that it is coming.
I’m grateful for the moisture, so I won’t complain about the snow. It is too early to rearrange the tools in the shed. And I try to remain flexible myself. I had planned to fire up the grill and cook outside on Friday, but it wasn’t hard to change my mind and menu plans to cook inside. The grill will wait for a warmer day when I have a few extra minutes.
One thing that is nice about the slow spring is that it allows me to put off some of the outdoor chores that will need to be tackled once good weather is in store. And the snow does a lovely job of covering up the undone work so that I don’t have to worry about it.
The up and down weather seems to suit my mood this Lent as well. The signs of hope seem relatively small. As we near the mid-point of Lent there is no denying that it has been a rough season in the life of our church. We have already had four funerals and I have spent more time with people who are nearing the end of their lives than is typical. It isn’t hard to imagine that we will have more funerals before Easter comes.
Of course people do not control the timing of their deaths and there is nothing inherent in the seasons of the church that makes for more deaths in one season than other. I know that we can have funerals in Eastertide as easily as during Lent. I can remember the deaths of ones in our congregation that have occurred in other seasons. One year we had a death on Christmas Eve just as we were preparing for our celebration of the birth of Christ. Birth and death are often very close in this life. But for those of us who live inside of the cycle of the seasons of the church, Lent provides an opportunity to focus our attention on loss and grief and to understand its role in the lives of everyone.
Here is the amazing, if quite obvious thing: live goes on.
Yesterday I was sitting in front of the windows at hospice house visiting with a friend. It happens that we joined this congregation on the same day. For him it was a return to Rapid City after having been away for some years. For me, it was my first time of living here. In the years that we have know each other he has experienced initial and then subsequent cancer diagnoses. He has had heart bypass surgery. He has seen almost every kind of cancer treatment you can imagine. He has experienced remission and then re-diagnosis. He has become friends with the cancer doctors from having spent so much time with them.
But what I remember most isn’t the doctors or the treatments. I remember working on Habitat for Humanity houses together. We’re both early risers and we used to be the first ones on the job site most days. He’d be sweeping or cleaning up when I arrived with the coffee. We’d sit and drink a cup of coffee and talk about life and the tasks for the day. They were precious times for me. You can learn a lot about life from listening.
Yesterday we were very aware that death is near. The hospice house gives you permission to talk about death. The choices he has made in terms of his care in the past week all are based on the simple fact that he is not able to recover and return to his life. One of the things that he has said to me on both of my last two visits is, “It is a whole new experience.” That is, of course, like many other things he has said over the years, an understatement. Facing your own death is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Our conversation, however, wasn’t about death. We talked about the gray juncos at the feeder and the deer in the yard. We talked about the beauty of the snow on the pine trees. We talked about the Habitat for Humanity house that our church is helping to build this spring and summer. We talked about a house he built in Texas and several on Oklahoma. He explained why the added cost of building a hip roof can provide savings in the long run if it is done right.
There is something inside of us that longs for life and even when we are deeply aware of the reality of death, we can think about it only in limited doses. In a room where there is no fear of death and no one is afraid to speak of its reality, our conversation continued to drift into the stuff of life. The joy of being together is deeper than the reality of death. In Corinthians, Paul asks, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Even though we will all one day die from this life, life continues.
It isn’t Easter yet, but we can’t ignore that it is coming.