Death: Grim Reaper & Trusted Friend

We are coming into spring time; the glory time of the vernal equinox. The time of fecundity, fertility, feral effulgence. This is the time of birth and new life---the male and female energies unite and new life is born.

So why the image of The Grim Reaper? Why the subject of death for today's Sunday sermon? Why "The one inexorable thing," in the words of nineteenth century writer Louise Guiney? Why did that title and the short description I wrote for our church newsletter assert itself? In that description I wrote, "Standing on the very lip of Spring, a deep vision arises: Life and death are one. Join us as we journey into an exploration of the place of death in the midst of life. There is joy here and a deepening grasp of something sustaining beyond words. Why did I write that, pushing other less paradoxical subjects aside?

An answer emerges in a set of other questions and thoughts: Who has not known the lightning terror of facing death? Who has not had someone dear or significant torn from their lives? How can we make room for death so that it becomes a wise advisor and trusted friend? Spirituality, human life itself, is vacant without an authentic openness to death---would it not serve us all to enter the cavern of our mortality to seek the gifts in its depths?"

Over time, I have lived with those questions riding inside me like a toy boat, its wooden pieces hammered together by a child's hand, floating on a muddy puddle, on a dirt road somewhere in my memory. Those questions have become even more poignant for me in this community which has sustained the loss of several elders who were much beloved, Chet Trossman, whose memorial I led on January 24th, and Lora Hawley, who died last Sunday night and whose memorial will be hosted in this hall next Sunday afternoon at 2:00 pm.

Dealing with these losses meant creating a certain kind of psychological/spiritual space, through an intention to be open-hearted. That space allowed two things: first, it allowed for a full affirmation of life as well as an unflinching goodbye to life; and, second, it allowed for the possibility of truly welcoming death.

In creating that space, in struggling with my questions about death, and in preparing for this sermon, I have discovered feelings and thoughts that are counter intuitive to our resistance to death. What I have felt active within me is a deep sense of continuity; a deep and absolute sense of death as a natural extension of life. There are two insights that I want to share that involve that sense of the utter naturalness of death.

I'd like to invite you to enter a sense of quiet receptivity, perhaps even of meditation, as I share with you these words about some of my journey with death:

What I first want to share with you happened just before I left to finish seminary in Berkeley back in 1993 shortly after I had turned fifty years old. During a brief period of a few days, for no apparent reason, the realization that I would die became very, very real for me. As its power swept through me, bringing a wave of muted terror and a powerful sense of startled amazement, almost as if I was finding out about death for the first time, I realized that every living being which had ever existed on the planet before my life time, had died. That insight deepened and I further saw and felt that every being which now lived along side me in this life, would die, too. And then the sensation/awareness went deeper still for I saw and felt clearly that every being, every plant and animal, and every human, who came after me, would also die. A wave of deep comfort came over me. I felt myself connected to all those living beings---already dead, now living, and yet to live---in the most profound of ways. Somehow that acute sensibility of our deaths brought me into a fuller, richer and more vital communion with them all. It felt safe, because it was so clearly the reality of existence on this planet. My death would not be unusual. I was not being singled out. I was not being subjected to something cruelly deviant and pointed at my person. Death said nothing negative about my intrinsic worth and dignity. What it did say was that I was fully a part of life. I was not separate, not excluded. I was thoroughly a member, fully and inextricably within the flow and order of life.

It was an astounding revelation. It brought a sense of peace about death I had never had before. In the stroke of a few minutes awareness, some of the deepest veins of the fear of death were swept away. I was left feeling grateful and humbled.

The second insight I had about death, that I want to share, was that that sense of death's naturalness really had taken hold within me. I seemed constitutionally unable to generate rage against death. You remember that rage, the rage Dylan Thomas wrote so passionately about in his poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. "Do not go gentle into that good night, // Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Such an impassioned sentiment simply had no place in my heart. True, I am not without anger, disappointment and grief when someone's life is cut short before they have fully lived, before they've been able to flower fully into and through their maturity. But those emotions rise from the tragedy of circumstance rather than from the fact of death as a reality.

As I have sat with this sense of the appropriateness of death---appropriate because it is . . . it inexorably IS---I feel glad and grateful that I have come to this place of recognition and acceptance. From this place of acceptance it is clear that death is especially appropriate as our subject, here as we enter Spring, because new death is no more separate from this world than new life is. And, if as Maya Angelou wrote, "Life seems to love the liver of it," then death, too, seems to be a lover, extending its all embracing arms to wrap us in its encompassing silent presence, calling us into a full partnership with reality.

As I sit with this awareness, I am opened and flow through a pool of memories of personal experiences I have with and about death that happened during the course of my life.

There are two I want to share because they contain within them, I think, a vision that has a further potential to transform the fear of and rage at death. The first memory happened as I was struggling with the question of entering seminary, and abandoning my teaching and psychotherapy careers. A choice that in my mid forties seemed like utter lunacy---and would probably, as it eventually did, mean that I would have to live separately from my daughter.

This is the story: I had just left my daughter at her aunt's and uncle's and was driving on my way to a political action meeting about Central America. The Southern California freeway was sparsely traveled, the sun was bright, the day dry and warm. I was in the fast lane with all the windows down to capture the maximum wash of that gloriously sensual California coastal air. Because of the wind, papers on the seat next to me began to blow around. I reached over to save them from going out the window and in the process pulled the wheel of the car to the right. As this happened a car came up fast in the right lane and I felt a collision coming. Yanking the wheel to the left to avoid an accident caused my car to go into a high speed fish-tailing slide. I instantly knew I was in serious trouble. I only have two memories after that.

One was of hanging upside down from the seat belt in my car which had flipped over in the median. I remember thinking "I've got to get out of here." The other was of actually trying to unhook the belt and open the door, which was hopelessly jammed shut. What is important about this experience, in the context of this service on death, was what happened about a week later. A friend came over to tend to me emotionally and physically and suggested that through deep relaxation, some call it hypnosis, I return to the accident and see what really happened. As I returned in memory to that wild ride, this scenario played itself out.

When I realized that the car was truly out of control, that I might collide after all with cars in the lanes near me, or flip over, or run head on into the center divide, I began a dialogue. Or, rather, a monologue---but one in which I believed I was being heard. It went like this: "Wait! Wait. This can't happen now. I can't die now. You promised. We made a deal. We had an agreement that if I was willing and able to bear my way through the difficulties of growing up---if I could do that: then I would be able to do my work!" And then my words turned with further intensity into a demand with such earnest passion that it became a demand: "And I haven't done my work yet!"

I am convinced I was engaged in a conversation with something beyond myself, call it God or Goddess, or the Ground of Being, or the Deep Psyche, or the Source of Life, the name is simply not important. What is important is that . . . I am convinced that my conversation was not a futile communication, nor one that was simply a product of fear and early childhood attitudes about who to appeal to in times of trouble. I am as convinced that I was heard by something, something receptive, active and vital---I am as convinced of that as I am that I now stand here before you; as I am that I am speaking to you, and you are hearing me.

What happened as a result of that encounter paralleled what is classic in the annals of the literature on near-death experiences. I was filled with a tremendous energy to get on with my life---which for me meant making the commitment to follow the path of professional UU ministry. Death had become my advisor. Death had thrust me before the door to a new life. My desire to live had made me knock vigorously at that door, demanding the chance to go on to answer a call into authentic service and a deeper spirituality that I truly believe is a key to my fulfillment as a person. I came to believe, as Stephen Levine wrote in his book, A Year To Live, "When death, the big wind, blows out our birthday candles, only the wish remains, and only that longing which deepens our wisdom and compassion will be of much use." Unlike Woody Allen who said, "I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens." I was fully willing to be present to my death, and that willingness made it possible for me to be present to my life---living out of that longing, a longing that was actively and powerfully deepening my wisdom and compassion, for myself and for others.

The second memory I want to share with you is of an experience I had as a chaplain in a large urban hospital during my clinical pastoral training for the ministry. I was called to the room of a woman elder who was dying of a number of disease complications at the age of 85.

Sophia was a devout Catholic and as death approached, she entered into constant prayer that was not heard but was visible on her continuously moving lips. At one point I intervened when the nurses on duty kept putting an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth making it difficult for her to hold her hands before her face in prayer and to move her mouth freely. Grateful that the mask was gone, she seemed comforted and continued to pray with the little energy that remained to her. Two of her sons and their wives were present and there was a quality of an intense tenderness and a painful sweetness that filled the room. Earlier there had been an electric tension while a third son struggled to control his emotions. That gave way to an exquisite calm when he decided to leave during her final hour.

What was even more extraordinary, that I want to share because of what it seems to tell us about death, was what happened at the very moment of death and immediately after. There was a moment when all of us in the room became aware that Sophia's lips had stopped moving. A stillness descended. She took a few very deep breaths, and then exhaled . . . into death. At that moment I felt a great exhalation move through the room from all around us, up toward the ceiling. Her body seemed immediately lighter, and I literally felt some essence of her being rise up out of her physical form and gently ascend from the room as if on a strong, but smooth wind. It was an experience so palpable, it could not be denied, so powerful and unexpected, it left me gasping.

Her sons and daughters-in-law all began crying softly, and when I asked them if they wanted me to lead them to pray, they said yes. I began praying in words that were not my own, with an insight into their lives together, and their Catholic faith, that I did not possess before I entered that room, and that I did not retain afterwards. There was a passion and clarity, a tenderness and love that seemed to flow out of me, joining the light that was filling the room. That luminous quality continued until my prayer ended. In that moment we all stood transfixed. A deep sense of gratitude filled me, filled everyone. The loss was deeply wrenching, but the gift was radiant. We had been in the presence of one of the deepest of all mysteries, intimately, powerfully and openly in its presence. We all felt a fragrant depth that one woman poet described by saying, "Death is the last / Secret implicit within you, the hidden, the deepest / Knowledge of all you will ever unfold / In this body of earth."

What is this mystery called death, which is "the ultimate disappearing act."? Our own Unitarian forbear, Florence Nightingale wrote, "A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place."

In order that we, this morning, might stand in the presence of that creative change, no matter what our theology of life and death, I want to leave you with two short readings and one poem.

The first reading, especially for those who believe that death is the ultimate end, is by Diane Ackerman in her book, A Natural History of the Senses:

When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

This second, for those who believe we, or something, goes on after our death, is by Stephen Levine writing in his book, A Year To Live:

Many readers of this book may not have another year. You might not even have another year. Only our incessant denial and wishful thinking assure us otherwise. In my experience, a year before they died, even those with advanced cancer and AIDS (and their physicians) did not believe that they had only a year to live. Even the men I worked with on death row in San Quentin in the seventies, who had been given a date of execution and were better informed than almost anyone as to the time of their death, still displayed a denial of death as intense as that on Wall Street. One fellow, who had eaten his "last meal" three times in the holding cell next to the gas chamber before he received a stay of execution, spoke of marveling at how the mind repeatedly fantasized about what it would do and say in the days to come.

Of course, the reason that some part of us denies that it will die is because it never does. Even Freud, who believed that a sense of immortality was just a delusion of the sub-, or under-, consciousness which he noted had no concept for its own death, missed the point that perhaps the reason something within feels immortal is because it is . . . whatever denial that-in-us-which-never-dies supports, must be closely examined so that it breeds confidence instead of stagnation.

Lastly, a poem by Mary Oliver, for us all:

When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Ashé. Amien. Shalom. Blessed Be. Namasté.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Kurt Kuhwald