Rewilding the Word #24
Brian Doyle (1956-2017), American author, essayist, editor, from his “Last Letter” written to God in his final days dying of a brain tumor at 60 years old, whom he addresses: “Dear Coherent Mercy: thanks. Best life ever.” Then, “I could complain a little right here about the long years of back pain and the occasional awful heartbreak, but Lord, those things were infinitesimal against the slather of gifts You gave mere me, a muddle of a man, so often selfish and small. But no man was ever more grateful for Your profligate generosity, and here at the very end, here in my last lines, I close my eyes and weep with joy that I was alive, and blessed beyond measure, and might well be headed back home to the incomprehensible Love from which I came, mewling, many years ago.”
Marcus Aurelius (121-180) – “It is not death that a person should fear, but he or she should fear never having begun to live.”
John 10 (NJB): 17 The Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as I have power to lay it down, so I have power to take it up again; and this is the command I have received from my Father.1
Commander Warf, “The Outcast” in Star Trek the Next Generation (March 1992): “A warrior does not let a friend face danger alone.”
J.K. Rowling, The Deathly Hallows, Chapter 35, “King’s Cross” pp. 711, 720-721, Professor Dumbledore speaking to Harry Potter – ““He [Lord Voldemort] was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do. … You [Harry] are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.”
James Finley (b. 1943): “As a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.”
Marcus Aurelius (121-180) – “It is not death that a person should fear, but he or she should fear never having begun to live.”
John 10 (NJB): 17 The Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as I have power to lay it down, so I have power to take it up again; and this is the command I have received from my Father.1
Commander Warf, “The Outcast” in Star Trek the Next Generation (March 1992): “A warrior does not let a friend face danger alone.”
J.K. Rowling, The Deathly Hallows, Chapter 35, “King’s Cross” pp. 711, 720-721, Professor Dumbledore speaking to Harry Potter – ““He [Lord Voldemort] was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do. … You [Harry] are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.”
James Finley (b. 1943): “As a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.”
A Story
Some twenty years ago now, I had an “understanding” with God.
I put it this way because I never talk to God, because it is beyond my ability to imagine that I have things to say that are worth entering God’s ear. And because God understands this, understands me, and because of His great courtesy, He allows me these “understandings”. God does not “talk” to me but, instead, let’s His presence and purposes be known to me, which is a subtle communication that I have learned to recognize. I say, as did Mary that one day when she had the prayer time of her life - Luke 1:38 ‘You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said.’ My reply to God is a kind of nod - Why chatter when a nod will do? - an opening in me to God who does not chatter at me but who communicates beautifully.
Some twenty years ago I had an “understanding” with God. It was that I would be dead in fifteen years. This had absolutely nothing to do with my desiring to die, and it was certainly not about constraining God to make sure that my expiry date was set. No, it had everything to do with a conviction that had been developing in me for years. I recognized how most every person that I knew (i.e., living persons not those who had died) were in denial about his or her death, rebelled at the thought, did not want to talk about it, feared it, and at root could not imagine that Death could be anything other than extermination, the voiding of all value. My “understanding” with God was that I would actively “accept” that I would die, so that He could teach me about Death, how He understood it.
Yet another reason that I had sought this “understanding” was that I had noticed how Jesus Himself had accepted His death considerably before he was executed. Do you recall the famous “Passion predictions” in the Gospels? (By calling them that, we have failed to notice what the disciples had failed to notice; namely, that they could just as easily have been called the “Resurrection predictions”.)
John Jacob Niles, from Songs of the Hill Folk, 1934 -
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor ordinary people like you and like I.
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.
I wanted to be taught by Jesus: “What happened inside of you when you had accepted your death? What did you feel, but also understand, when you recognized how your disciples were reacting badly to your acceptance of death? What did you understand that only the acceptance of your death could reveal to you? Why was Satan so afraid of death, that he chose to deploy the fear of death as a primary weapon against human beings, getting us to fear death as he did?”
One of the proofs and the most convincing sign of the fear of death in worldly powerful people (who have been or who are being devoured by their evil impulses) is how habitually they manipulate people through fear, who gain a taste for killing. They use as a weapon against others the very thing that most scares them. Of course, the “powerful” are hardly the only ones who do this.
Morgan Edwin (1920-1010), “Grendel”: “It is being nearly human gives me this spectacular darkness. / The light does not know what to do with me.”
Over those fifteen years inside of the “understanding” that I mentioned above, I experienced in several significant ways a profound re-doing of my theological and spiritual convictions. It was as if I had been asleep in the years before my acceptance of death. It was also a revelation of the gift of Death, which was won for us and given to us through the Resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit. It is the only thing that knows the way to Heaven. I know how people could not imagine that their death was one of God’s most important gifts to them, not just in one way but in many ways. But their fear of it removes any chance that God could teach them what they never expected could be true. I esteem the wisdom in this sentence: “What a person does not value, he or she will take no trouble to comprehend.”
In the tradition of the liturgical calendar, the month of November (i.e., the last four weeks of the Christian year before Advent that is the commencement of a new year), asks us to spend time with the “last things”. The biblical readings designated to be read aloud at the Catholic Masses during November are all about this, are meant to help us with these ultimate realities of our human life here, before we are there.
Eschatology in the minds of many is understood to refer to the study of the last things (Greek: eschata), namely death, judgment, heaven, hell and the second coming of Christ. … It is possible to detect the existence of at least two different strands of eschatology, the one focusing on the destiny of the individual with graphic accounts of the hereafter in terms of heaven, hell and purgatory, and the other attending to the collective destiny of the world—natural and human—in terms of the general resurrection of the dead and the dawning of a New Creation. These two eschatologies, individual and collective, must be kept together in any adequate theological treatment of the last things.
The poets Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and John Donne (1572-1631) had a habit of wondering about death. This did not make them morbid; it made them insightful; it made them people worth listening to about Death. Below is perhaps John Donne’s most famous sonnet.
Some twenty years ago now, I had an “understanding” with God.
I put it this way because I never talk to God, because it is beyond my ability to imagine that I have things to say that are worth entering God’s ear. And because God understands this, understands me, and because of His great courtesy, He allows me these “understandings”. God does not “talk” to me but, instead, let’s His presence and purposes be known to me, which is a subtle communication that I have learned to recognize. I say, as did Mary that one day when she had the prayer time of her life - Luke 1:38 ‘You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said.’ My reply to God is a kind of nod - Why chatter when a nod will do? - an opening in me to God who does not chatter at me but who communicates beautifully.
Some twenty years ago I had an “understanding” with God. It was that I would be dead in fifteen years. This had absolutely nothing to do with my desiring to die, and it was certainly not about constraining God to make sure that my expiry date was set. No, it had everything to do with a conviction that had been developing in me for years. I recognized how most every person that I knew (i.e., living persons not those who had died) were in denial about his or her death, rebelled at the thought, did not want to talk about it, feared it, and at root could not imagine that Death could be anything other than extermination, the voiding of all value. My “understanding” with God was that I would actively “accept” that I would die, so that He could teach me about Death, how He understood it.
Yet another reason that I had sought this “understanding” was that I had noticed how Jesus Himself had accepted His death considerably before he was executed. Do you recall the famous “Passion predictions” in the Gospels? (By calling them that, we have failed to notice what the disciples had failed to notice; namely, that they could just as easily have been called the “Resurrection predictions”.)
John Jacob Niles, from Songs of the Hill Folk, 1934 -
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor ordinary people like you and like I.
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.
I wanted to be taught by Jesus: “What happened inside of you when you had accepted your death? What did you feel, but also understand, when you recognized how your disciples were reacting badly to your acceptance of death? What did you understand that only the acceptance of your death could reveal to you? Why was Satan so afraid of death, that he chose to deploy the fear of death as a primary weapon against human beings, getting us to fear death as he did?”
One of the proofs and the most convincing sign of the fear of death in worldly powerful people (who have been or who are being devoured by their evil impulses) is how habitually they manipulate people through fear, who gain a taste for killing. They use as a weapon against others the very thing that most scares them. Of course, the “powerful” are hardly the only ones who do this.
Morgan Edwin (1920-1010), “Grendel”: “It is being nearly human gives me this spectacular darkness. / The light does not know what to do with me.”
Over those fifteen years inside of the “understanding” that I mentioned above, I experienced in several significant ways a profound re-doing of my theological and spiritual convictions. It was as if I had been asleep in the years before my acceptance of death. It was also a revelation of the gift of Death, which was won for us and given to us through the Resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit. It is the only thing that knows the way to Heaven. I know how people could not imagine that their death was one of God’s most important gifts to them, not just in one way but in many ways. But their fear of it removes any chance that God could teach them what they never expected could be true. I esteem the wisdom in this sentence: “What a person does not value, he or she will take no trouble to comprehend.”
In the tradition of the liturgical calendar, the month of November (i.e., the last four weeks of the Christian year before Advent that is the commencement of a new year), asks us to spend time with the “last things”. The biblical readings designated to be read aloud at the Catholic Masses during November are all about this, are meant to help us with these ultimate realities of our human life here, before we are there.
Eschatology in the minds of many is understood to refer to the study of the last things (Greek: eschata), namely death, judgment, heaven, hell and the second coming of Christ. … It is possible to detect the existence of at least two different strands of eschatology, the one focusing on the destiny of the individual with graphic accounts of the hereafter in terms of heaven, hell and purgatory, and the other attending to the collective destiny of the world—natural and human—in terms of the general resurrection of the dead and the dawning of a New Creation. These two eschatologies, individual and collective, must be kept together in any adequate theological treatment of the last things.
The poets Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and John Donne (1572-1631) had a habit of wondering about death. This did not make them morbid; it made them insightful; it made them people worth listening to about Death. Below is perhaps John Donne’s most famous sonnet.
Text – “Death, Be Not Proud” by John Donne (1572-1631)
Rundell, Katherine. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (p. 277-278) – “When Donne wrote about suicide there was urgent pain. But when he wrote about death in itself, there is great, serious joy, and occasional rampant glee. Spiritually speaking, many of us confronted with the thought of death perform the psychological equivalence of hiding in a box with our knees under our chin. Donne hunted death, battled it, killed it, saluted it, threw it parties. His poetry explicitly about death is rarely sad: it thrums with strange images of living. … When Donne was talking about death, he did not, unlike most of his contemporaries, yearn for the silence and stillness of the tomb. No: death was to be explosive, multicolored, transmogrifying. He wanted ravishment: ‘I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me.’”
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Rundell, Katherine. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (p. 277-278) – “When Donne wrote about suicide there was urgent pain. But when he wrote about death in itself, there is great, serious joy, and occasional rampant glee. Spiritually speaking, many of us confronted with the thought of death perform the psychological equivalence of hiding in a box with our knees under our chin. Donne hunted death, battled it, killed it, saluted it, threw it parties. His poetry explicitly about death is rarely sad: it thrums with strange images of living. … When Donne was talking about death, he did not, unlike most of his contemporaries, yearn for the silence and stillness of the tomb. No: death was to be explosive, multicolored, transmogrifying. He wanted ravishment: ‘I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me.’”
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
A Close Reading of the Text
“Death, be not proud … Death, though shalt die” – Donne puts a comma after Death to clarify that he is directly addressing Death as you or I address a person. We never do this in our typical way of speaking. We think of death as a thing. Yet for us, death does not exist abstractly, as if we related to it as we would to a bottle of poison. Rather, death is intensely personal; it is a moment given to each of us; it is given us so that we might use it well. “As a person has lived, so a person dies.” For each of us what matters here can be formulated as a question: What do I intend to do with my dying and death?
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
What we intended to do with our birth was not available to us to know when we were born; it took years, and years, to figure that out. Have you figured it out? What we intend to do with our dying and death, how we want to make it mean something – “something beautiful for God” – we should, each year in the month of November, be considering. We beg God for the chance to imbue this last act of our living with all the love that we have, filling it with our inner light, as do the nearly dead leaves about to fall from the Autumn trees express themselves with an unexpected and startling beauty … and then let go. But here it means our inner beauty appearing – the light within, the generous acceptance, the gratitude for all blessings, the desire to bless. This is the “beautiful death” that we Catholic children were taught to pray that we would make.
When Donne remonstrates with Death as proud, he addresses Satan, our first and last enemy – 1 Corinthians 15:26 and the last of the enemies to be done away with is death, for he [Christ] has put all things under his feet.
Ephesians 2 (NJB): 1 And you were dead, through the crimes and the sins 2 which used to make up your way of life when you were living by the principles of this world, obeying the ruler who dominates the air, the spirit who is at work in those who rebel.
Satan, lacking sufficient capacity to attack God, tries to hurt or punish God by terrorizing His children, by haunting us, by getting us to turn on each other and to destroy ourselves. (We seem to have a real talent for this.) Satan frightens us by convincing us that our death is a threat, something that takes our life rather than grants us a final chance to give our life, to lay it down freely – a sacrifice of praise - before the One Who gave it to us: No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. We can complete the work of art that has been our life: Ephesians 2:10 We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works which God has already designated to make up our way of life.
Satan proves that he can see only his own thoughts. He imagines that only he understands God and us and the world correctly. Such a self-absorbed view is what pride does to a created soul. (Remember that Satan is an Angel, a created being just like us, though of a higher order of being.) Pride is, as Death is in Donne’s poem, profoundly blind.
New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (2000), p. 249 - Pride: It is marked by a self-aggrandizement that clouds not only God’s sovereignty and others’ worth but also an appreciation of one’s true self. Distinct from healthy self-esteem and from a justifiable pride in one’s own God-given talents and achievements, the sin of pride often involves disregard or contempt for ideas and judgments other than one’s own. A chief aspect of pride is vainglory, which comprises the inordinate effort to show one’s own excellence and the insatiable need for approval.
Donne concludes: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” What a brilliant conclusion to this sonnet!
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
What we intended to do with our birth was not available to us to know when we were born; it took years, and years, to figure that out. Have you figured it out? What we intend to do with our dying and death, how we want to make it mean something – “something beautiful for God” – we should, each year in the month of November, be considering. We beg God for the chance to imbue this last act of our living with all the love that we have, filling it with our inner light, as do the nearly dead leaves about to fall from the Autumn trees express themselves with an unexpected and startling beauty … and then let go. But here it means our inner beauty appearing – the light within, the generous acceptance, the gratitude for all blessings, the desire to bless. This is the “beautiful death” that we Catholic children were taught to pray that we would make.
When Donne remonstrates with Death as proud, he addresses Satan, our first and last enemy – 1 Corinthians 15:26 and the last of the enemies to be done away with is death, for he [Christ] has put all things under his feet.
Ephesians 2 (NJB): 1 And you were dead, through the crimes and the sins 2 which used to make up your way of life when you were living by the principles of this world, obeying the ruler who dominates the air, the spirit who is at work in those who rebel.
Satan, lacking sufficient capacity to attack God, tries to hurt or punish God by terrorizing His children, by haunting us, by getting us to turn on each other and to destroy ourselves. (We seem to have a real talent for this.) Satan frightens us by convincing us that our death is a threat, something that takes our life rather than grants us a final chance to give our life, to lay it down freely – a sacrifice of praise - before the One Who gave it to us: No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. We can complete the work of art that has been our life: Ephesians 2:10 We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works which God has already designated to make up our way of life.
Satan proves that he can see only his own thoughts. He imagines that only he understands God and us and the world correctly. Such a self-absorbed view is what pride does to a created soul. (Remember that Satan is an Angel, a created being just like us, though of a higher order of being.) Pride is, as Death is in Donne’s poem, profoundly blind.
New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (2000), p. 249 - Pride: It is marked by a self-aggrandizement that clouds not only God’s sovereignty and others’ worth but also an appreciation of one’s true self. Distinct from healthy self-esteem and from a justifiable pride in one’s own God-given talents and achievements, the sin of pride often involves disregard or contempt for ideas and judgments other than one’s own. A chief aspect of pride is vainglory, which comprises the inordinate effort to show one’s own excellence and the insatiable need for approval.
Donne concludes: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” What a brilliant conclusion to this sonnet!
A Prayer - Vox Clara Ecce Intonat (in part, 6th century)
[For the complete text in its original Latin with an English translation: https://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/VoxClara.html.]
[For the complete text in its original Latin with an English translation: https://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/VoxClara.html.]
A thrilling voice by Jordan rings,
rebuking guilt and darksome things:
vain dreams of sin and visions fly;
Christ in His might shines forth on high.
Now let each torpid soul arise,
that sunk in guilt and wounded lies;
see! the new Star’s refulgent ray
shall chase disease and sin away.
The Lamb descends from heaven above
to pardon sin with freest love:
for such indulgent mercy shown
with tearful joy our thanks we own.
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2 Comments
This edition of "Rewilding the Word" is a reminder that it's not about "our justice," but God's justice and that our sacred duty, as believers, is to forgive, rather than to point the finger. Sow forgiveness, reap peace! This is especially important in the face of false accusation, when we are most tempted to prove ourselves righteous. Jesus, however, did not do this, and allowed people to believe what they would about Him. There is a pernicious modern tendency towards "demanding justice" in one arena, whilst ignoring it entirely in another. (Social justice warriors.) If the focus is cancellation/condemnation rather than correction and forgiveness, there is something wrong.
Thank you for these meaningful thoughts Rick.
n~ m