Death

It fascinates me.

There was an interesting passage in the book that I'm reading, and the author was conveying how our basic human understanding is based on experience. It's easy for us to accept the fact that we can live forever - because none of us who are alive have ever... died. But have any of us ever experienced "matchless grace"? Or "unconditional love"? Sure, for those of us who have been called... chosen... redeemed... we can SAY that we have experienced those things, but they are not tangible experiences. They are void of the physiological components that are necessary for human consumption. Or so we think, anyway.

I could spend an endless hour in a graveyard. Slabs of marble and granite marking the spot in which a family has chosen to bury their dead. Complex existences condensed into chiseled dates and one sentence declarations. Vibrant greens and floras thriving in spite of smelly decomposition processes happening not six feet below the surface. It's a veritable smorgasbord of ironies and contradictions. Which unabashedly draws souls that are naturally inclined toward death.

Graves simplify the mystic intrigue of death. It wraps it up in a neat wooden package - complete with dirt and grass. Honestly, I think we over simplify the process. And since our understanding is wrapped up in experience, perhaps that is why it is so hard to allow our brains to wrap itself around what our hearts already know: death is necessary to life. Nothing REALLY lives except for that it first dies. It sounds poetic. It sounds right.

I am forever stumbling over my preconceived notions on my way to arriving at a clue that points to how this whole "thing" is supposed to work. Die to self. Die. Death. Non-living. Non-breathing. Non-eating. Worm food. It's dead. DEAD. Finished. OVER. So..... if it keeps showing up at the front door, doesn't that mean that it never really died?

Scripture validates our daily struggle with our selves. It's supposed to be a daily crucifying. An active, breathing choice to "die". Right? Suicide of the flesh. How freaked out would we be if Aunty Mame called us up and wanted to go out to lunch?

"Ummm, aren't you dead?" Apparently not.

We LOVE our boxes. Our neatly compartmentalized lives and experiences. "That one goes here. That one there. And God? If you'll please come right on in and take up residence in this one. I KNOW it's small, and the paint isn't quite dry - but I built it to the specifications as have been communicated to me on every Sunday, from every pulpit, in every church I've ever been to. It's basically what we understand to be... You."

It doesn't work that way, booboo. As much as I reeeeaaaaaally reeeeaaaaaaally reeeeeeaaaaaaally want to be able to squeeze the Almighty into my convenient box of plaster and stale wafers - He doesn't. To say He is "bigger" doesn't do Him justice... but that's only because my view of "big" is limited to mountains and sky. And if God's version of "big" is... eternity? Then maybe death and dying isn't as cut and dry as we would like to believe that it is.

The FRUSTRATING thing about being so... human, is that nothing is as it was originally intended to be. So, here I am living in a redeemed version of fallen perfection, muddling through my very LIMITED idea of "how this thing works", annoyed beyond reason at having to constantly KILL things that just... refuse to DIE. Because MY version of "DIE", is something that doesn't come back to life. But as history shows us, God's definition is waaaaay beyond what we are able to comprehend in our WAAAAY unglorified bodies.

*sits quietly*

*stares blankly*

Evidently, I've kind of dug myself too deep, and am unable to bring my thought process full circle. So, I'm going to stop digging. And... take a nap.

Or something.

Comments

[Dana]

but do you ever--just sometimes --get a glimpse
jsut a tiny little sliver of what it would be like if we really did know?
sometimes i do--and it's ---- indescrible

[Misty]

I just love this post. I wish I would have written it.