Giving thanks for friends, poems and the presence of the Lord...

One of my dearest blogger friends recently sent me this poem - and it knocked me out.

A CAT NAMED YETI

by Peter Siedlecki

I believe it was Camus

who said,

in words different from these,

that the most logical thing

one can do with life

is end it

before it comes apart.

I,

who have reached a stage

in which my life’s parts

are held together

with tape and wire,

have never pretended

to be logical,

only human.

And I would rather die

as this cat is dying

without acknowledging an ending,

only a series of beginnings:

beginning to find warm secret places,

beginning to display unexplained lesions, 

beginning to let my eyes crust over with tears,

beginning periods of long yowling,

beginning to disdain food and water,

beginning the stench of decay,

beginning the process of sickly annoyance

in a manner learned from Dostoevski or Tolstoy.

Oh,

I know so well those words

that others use like warm blankets

to make the secret places

even softer

declaring yet another beginning

some cloudy softness beyond this life.

I ask,

too quietly for them to hear, How could there be

anything more lovely

than this life

with its multifold beginnings?

I must confess that I am somewhere between Camus and Siedlecki on this:  I, too, believe there is something mysterious and sacred that happens in a good death. I sense that it should be made as painless as possible, but not cut short.  There are truths and gifts to be claimed in death if we are able to bear and receive them.  For even when life comes apart, that is not the end of the story. I resonate with the ancient song of Israel found in Psalm 139:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away. 
³ You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways. 
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely. 
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me. 
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it. 

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? 
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 
¹¹ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, 
¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. 

Logic has its place - science and insight, too - but there is a wisdom and grace deeper than the bottom line, yes?  That is why I trust that there IS something beyond this beautiful, sweet, challenging and sometimes agonizing life.  I trust by faith when the poems of Scripture point to an embrace by the Sacred that lasts forever.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home^* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell^* with them;
they will be his peoples,^*
and God himself will be with them;^* 
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

Recently Fr. Richard Rohr noted that the two BEST teachers about mystery and living in awe were attending a birth and being present for a good death.  These are not experiences for professionals, but the essence of our humanity - and without intimacy with real flesh and blood we remain aloof, afraid and even ignorant of the Holy within and among us.  Rohr wrote:

We must learn how to walk through the stages of dying. We have to grieve over lost friends, relatives, and loves. Death cannot be dealt with through quick answers, religious platitudes, or a stiff upper lip. Dying must be allowed to happen over time, in predictable and necessary stages, both in those who die graciously and in those who love them. Grief, believe it or not, is a liminal space where God can fill the tragic gap with something new and totally unexpected. Yet the process cannot be rushed. I would say thatbeing present at live birth and conscious death are probably the supreme catechism classes and Sunday schools that we have available to humanity. And yet we have turned them largely into medical events instead of the inherently spiritual events that they are.

It is not only the loss of persons that leads to grief, but also the loss of ideals, visions, plans, places, relationships, and our youth itself. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross helped us name the necessary stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance (They are the same as the stages of dying itself). Grief work might be one of the most redemptive, and yet still unappreciated, ministries in the church. Some call it bereavement ministry. Thank God, it is being discovered as perhaps the paramount time of both spacious grace and painful gift.

I love the Cat Names Yeti poem - and give thanks to God for my friend - even when my take on the end days goes in a different direction.  Today I rejoice in friends and sharing wisdom, love and poetry.