Passage.
When you walk through someone’s passion with them, through someone’s learning to let go, and pass over with them in a moment of death, I’m convinced it’s then and only then that you really are prepared to understand the resurrection. . . . All Jesus came to teach us, and only needed to teach us, was how to walk through the great mystery… to trust that God is on the other side of it.
~ Richard Rohr
journey, week 3
Some parts of the path are gorgeous and exhilarating; other parts are ominous and daunting. In order to make it very far at all on our long journey home, we have to become somewhat comfortable with both. Not that the “valley of the shadow of death” ever becomes a happy destination exactly, but we have to go through this valley enough times that we internalize a certain optimism and confidence that there is indeed a way through, that intimidation and fear do not have the final word. Because, eventually, death will itself be the very portal to our ultimate destination.
I just got back from my aunt’s funeral in Rocky Mount, NC, where my father grew up. It is small-town eastern North Carolina at its finest, known for scrubby pine trees, genteel manners, and vinegar-based barbecue. My aunt Susan had been suffering for years with a degenerative neurological disease, so it was a mercy that she could finally leave her distressed body and go be with Jesus. But she leaves a hole… particularly for my grieving uncle after 60 years together.
Funerals are a gift for many reasons: the extended family, the old friends, the remembrances, the fried chicken. But more profoundly, they help us step out of the immediacy and myopia of everyday life to at least glance at the big picture and ask ourselves the larger questions. The really important questions like, Who am I again? Where am I really going? What will people say about me when I leave this world? And what is it that I really want to be living for? For this reason particularly, funerals are a priceless gift, and I hope you won’t miss this great invitation when you attend one next. When was the last time you considered these weighty questions?
What do you think that ultimate passage will be like for you? None of us knows exactly. We hope, we believe, we trust… and we pray that we won’t have to suffer on the way through. It’s a sober and provocative consideration. And every one of us is approaching it, faster than we think. Everyone in my aunt’s generation—including both sets of our parents—will be taking that passage in the next decade, give or take. Some of them want to talk about it, and some don’t.
I have a very specific hope for myself. I’m not sure if it’s realistic or not, but I imagine it could be. I hope that every year of mine, from this one to my last, consists of the loving presence of God becoming more viscerally all-encompassing and indwelling that, when it’s time to take one last step over that dark threshold into Aslan’s country, it feels more like home than home. I hope that I have become so very attuned to the Kingdom of God in this world, and that the veil separating this world from the next becomes so incredibly thin, that I am almost gone before I’m gone if that makes any sense.
In the meantime, though, I want to be both impressed by the brevity of my life while being equally assured that there is more than enough time to be who I’m supposed to be here. That I can do some genuine and enduring good in this world before I move to the next. And that the next dimension will find me moving deliciously into the full measure of my True Self, of whom I only get glimpses now. And finally, having embraced the panorama of the trail ahead from the vantage point of a funeral, I can return to my daily life with a deeper commitment to peace, love, and joy in every minute and every face. Are you with me?
growing your soul
Go ahead, take a shot at the big questions above and spend a little quiet time this weekend with your journal and this prompt: What is it that I really want to be living for?
serving our world
And this prompt: What will people say about me when I leave this world? What would I want them to say… and what would it take for that to be true?
takeaway
Imagine.