Life and Death in the Same Frame
It does something to you, to see life beginning and ending in such close juxtaposition.
Congregational life is, it seems to me, a sort of concentration of family life. Events that would be separated by months or years in a biological family get concentrated into hours or days. And the pastor gets a front row seat.
For example, last Wednesday my secretary told me that a young couple in the congregation had just had twins. I went to the hospital to see Alex and Nathan: so tiny, so beautiful. I felt clumsy holding them, just five pounds each, feeling their squirming, whimpering fragility.
The room was filled with women—aunts, cousins, friends—and I was impressed (again) at how at ease women are in this setting, how confidently they handle the babies, how untroubled by all the pains and complications and responsibilities that occupy the room with us, and that leave us men feeling mildly embarrassed and quite out of our depth.
There was a soft joy in the place, and I thought how glad I am that I live in a time when we can celebrate new life entering the world without the fear that the mother’s life might end at the same time, which was true for much of human history.
On the same day, I got a call that Matilda, an eighty-eight-year-old church member, was dying after two sad, senile years in a nursing home. It was the kind of news one receives with relief. Her life had long since ceased to be worth living (an audacious judgment to make, I know, though I’ll stand by it). I can remember—one of the advantages of a long pastorate—when her husband was alive, when they were part of our church family, when they’d greet at the church door, served as deacon and deaconess, and baked homemade bread to share with friends.
Matilda’s niece called me to make the arrangements. And it occurs to me that here, too, at the end of life, I’ve often found women, even in grief, more intuitive than we men. They seem to know what’s needed—a casserole, a hug—and what to say, what not to say, when to be silent, with a naturalness that one can’t learn in school.
(I didn’t mean this to be a paean to the other gender, though it does make one wonder why women still aren’t quite allowed full access to my occupation. I suspect ministry would be quite a different thing: less positional and acquired, more unaffected and artless. And the church quite a different sort of place, too.)
It does something to you, to see life beginning and ending in such close juxtaposition. I can’t help but remember that Matilda was, decades back, someone’s precious babe in arms. And Alex and Nathan, decades hence, may be old men in a nursing home, sick, broken, senile.
It’s like watching the end of a movie and the beginning at the same time, and it makes life seem, not necessarily longer or shorter, but progressing, continuous, beginnings and endings endlessly repeating—different names and faces, but continuing, like a chain smoker lighting a new cigarette from the consumed one.
One of our favorite Adventist texts is Ecclesiastes 9:5: “The dead know not anything.” Though we have a specific point we’re trying to make when we quote it, it does sound dark and fatalistic taken by itself. As long as we’re in a melancholy state of mind, then, I’ll go farther and suggest that we take just as seriously the first clause of that passage: “The living know that they shall die.” The two go together, and apparently, to Ecclesiastes’ preacher, the unconscious state of the dead is no more important than the warning that life as we know it now is of limited duration, and never far from its terminus. Perhaps in that light we’d travel life’s track with a touch more urgency, and as the Psalmist recommends (Ps. 90:12) number our days to apply our hearts to wisdom.
Over against those rather bleak reminders are two promises of life for all of us living who’ve now been warned what to expect: new spiritual life, and new biological life. The first, in John 3:3: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” The second, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16: that in the eschaton, “the dead in Christ shall rise.” Both promises are precious. And both tantalizing: the new birth because it presents in unique ways in every life, making it hard to know precisely what to expect. The resurrection, because bringing life to dead bones is something we’ve heard of but not seen, and so in spite of the promise, death is still as unwelcome as birth is beautiful.
So right now I’m feeling a little like those old Russian writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who in their novels and stories placed life and death, happiness and sadness, achievement and failure, joy and gloom, all in the same frame, part of the same picture, never completely carefree or entirely despondent about this mortal span, but more honest for portraying a chiaroscuro of failure and redemption.
Loren Seibold is senior pastor of the Worthington, Ohio, Seventh-day Adventist Church. He also edits a newsletter for North American Division pastors called Best Practices for Adventist Ministry.
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Comments
Beautifully written. I appreciate your plug for conversion. It's a miracle and it never ceases to amaze me. My youngest daughter was a rebel bound for self-destruction until December 10, 2006 when I told her 1) you'll die if you go on like this, and 2) the only way you'll change is if you accept Jesus. I had hesitated to lay down the plummet line like that, fearing the accusation that I was "forcing" her to accept "my" religion. But I knew it was time. To my faithless amazement she said, "I'm ready" and so was born again.
For months her gait was weak, like a newborn calf. She'd stumble. I'd repeat, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new." Today she is a vibrant, free-spirited Christian girl.
Just lovely. Not least for the use of the word "chiaroscuro,"
which is a sheer defiance of customary Internet mediocrity.
I hope words like this can become the basis for a Pastor's Blog on this website. The crying need just now is for people, and in particular pastors, who want to CONSTRUCT the new Adventism.
Demolition of the old, or of the unsatisfactory, is the easy part.
Chuck
"Chiaroscuro" is a great word, Chuck. Makes for great paintings too. Problem is that the old/unsatisfactory Adventism cannot tolerate contrast. Shame, because contrast is very pretty.
Loren,
I especially appreciate your final thoughts on holding to a larger picture of life in all its complexity. Being present to birth and death in one day does seem to represent THE frame for each day of life. I've found in my own work as a hospice chaplain that I am developing a greater capacity to hold this larger picture. Being with people as they are dying has moved me into a deeper current of my own life. So many of the perspectives on death and dying point to this seeming paradox--that in facing death we learn how to live.
Heather
So many of the perspectives on death and dying point to this seeming paradox--that in facing death we learn how to live.
Heather,
Do you really mean this? I mean, have you experienced the childhood loss of a parent, sibling, child?
I am just wondering if, as a small child, death took your father and left you a fatherless child or, as a mother, you saw your young children tenderly wrap their arms around their emaciated father (after an eighteen month struggle with cancer) the last time that he somehow was able to walk to the living room, and to whom they broken heartedly said their last goodbyes a few weeks later, or both.
Please tell me how 'in facing death we learn how to live'. Pain and sorrow teach one about life alright but I can't really recommend it.
Molly
Facing one’s own death can teach one how to live. I don’t know if this is what Heather was referring to; I can only speak from my own experiences. I’ve faced death a number of times, within minutes of dying, and I can tell you that the result is totally different than if I were to face the death of a family member. What I’ve found is that it is not death that I fear, but the process of dying.
Molly,
I did not mean to sound clinically detached from the personal experience of loss and suffering. Rather, I wanted to reflect on what struck me as deeply true in Pastor Seibold's column, namely, how we are changed when we sit with a larger picture of life, a picture that can hold both beauty and suffering, joy and sorrow, birth and death. As I see more of how all these things are connected by the frame of life, I also wonder what options there are for living within that bigger picture. Since we can't escape death--we can't put it outside of the frame--then perhaps we can relate differently to it, seeing it less as an enemy and more as a teacher. I only meant to reflect this in my above post. I did not mean to overlook or downplay the devastation present in the kinds of losses you described.
Heather
I'm very sympathetic to Molly's frustration. Reflecting on death is one thing, especially when we're talking about someone who is "old and full of years" as I was here. Experiencing it at close hand is another.
When my parents died (too young, in middle age, about the age I am now), people would say "God can make you a better person for going through this." I really wanted to believe that, and I've always tried to figure out what I was supposed to have learned, or how I have improved, from all that wrenching sorrow. It took years before I could even begin to see the possibility of any spiritual growth from it. There is some: I think I've become more sympathetic to others. But it has also left some wounds, some doubts and questions and stray bits of anger I didn't have before. In the midst of grief, life is just bleak and sad, and that's why I mentioned the Russian novelists: there was a darkness there that is occasionally, in a strange way, comforting.
So I'm not sure how you assess such losses as Molly describes. I tell myself, and others, that God will make it all up to us. Again, words. But it is the only hope we have. Without that hope, we have nothing to live for.
So I say it again, and again: God will make it right. Death will be swallowed up in victory.
But not quite yet.
Too many cliches are given to others in the face of death. I, too, was told about the "stages of grief" that would be experienced (from books) but it wasn't so. Everyone's grief is very personal and must be worked through at her own pace.
There is a world of difference in burying a child and in burying a parent or older relative.
We expect the latter; we never expect the first.
Saying simply: "I'm so sorry for your loss" and if possible, follow up with some help such as food for incoming relatives, or what will be needed. Other than that, do not forget and avoid, nor be afraid to speak of loved one. The family remaining don't want their loved one to be forgotten and happy times should frequently be mentioned, if possible, to keep those memories alive.
Heather, thank you for your reply. I think that we all tend to make broad generalisations. One may learn something, perhaps even be changed by an event/experience, but that is specific, conditional, and personal and one must be careful when expanding upon it. I respect the work you that do in bringing comfort and care to the dying and their families.
Loren, thanks for your recognition of my frustration and hurt, not so much at Heather’s words, but at the gloss frequently painted over what is the tragedy of all life.
When you say, however, “…that God will make it all up to us…Without that hope, we have nothing to live for...” , I would have to disagree. Even in a hopeless world there would be people who love and depend upon us and a society that needed goodness, honesty, and decency in preference to waste, destruction, and hurt.
Elaine, your suggestions are all helpful.
"I have a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really befriend death we would be free people....Our lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of a threatening stranger....Many people seem never to befriend death and die as if they were losing a hopeless battle. But we do not have to share that sad fate." Henri J. M. Nouwen, "A Letter of Consolation."
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