It is odd how sometimes we are stalked by non-predators. In a recent case, I was told of a book by my auto mechanic, Death in the Long Grass, by Peter Capstick, about his adventures as a big-game hunter guide in Africa. I even wrote the title down on the back of the bill (for back brakes, about six hundred bucks. Talk about big game prices) but that disappeared on the floor of the Jeep, as most things written down on the road do. But Capstick is a persistent hunter. As I was leaving a dinner party, I looked over the bookcase of the host, noting some obscure and fading book (from 1904 I was to find) about human sexuality. Of course I had to pick it up, for they knew as much about human sexuality then as now, but how were they forced to write about it? But as the host took it from the shelf for me to view, he said, “Oh, and this guy is a great author. Give him a try.” Of course it was Capstick and his Long Grass book. The host insisted I borrow it, and I needed no more prodding.
It is mostly fun stuff, light-reading adventure candy that imparts real information. Male lions, for instance, measure close to ten feet long, weigh 500 pounds, and can sprint one hundred yards in 3 seconds. That is usually a longer distance than the hunter gets, and even that distance gives barely enough time to point the gun. Man-eaters are also usually not toothless and dying oldsters, but healthy specimens often in the prime of life. To them, we are just meat. Humbling indeed.
But it is not all fluff. The author often tries to explain why one would put oneself unnecessarily in such danger as hunting lions or elephants. He grasps and tries to nail it. It is, he says, a test of oneself; it is like climbing the Matterhorn or driving in a speed race; it is facing your greatest fears and conquering them; and most tellingly for me, it is an attempt to grasp a greater slice of life. That last bit is the key, pointing our way to what is really wrong with the world.
A greater slice of life: why should we need it? If we force ourselves to think about it, we all understand. It is that, because of our fear of the real, we push our very real and imminent mortality behind us. With that, we leave behind the essence of life. For instance, many people I know have been diagnosed with very bad forms of cancer. I feel for them very much, but still, it is them. I cannot fully admit that I might well be the next one to fall. It is true that we should not worry about things we cannot control – this we are told by Jesus Christ himself – but to live life to the fullest, we must fully face what it is. Without that, we eventual are lost in a gray neutral zone of meaninglessness.
Still, we cannot bear it; so we build a world as well as we can to keep our minds off of it. Cancer? That one over there got it because he smoked, or worked on brake linings, or ate too much fatty foods. Heart attack? Fatty foods again, or lack of exercise or not enough spinach. Whatever. We deflect the obvious. Like a member of a herd of gazelles, we look on dispassionately at our poor cousin who is currently being disappeared by a pack of lions. Bad news, but he’s not us. Time to get back to grazing, or in my case, to March Madness.
Again, we should not dwell at all times on our inevitable demise, but we must admit to it or pay the consequences. These include neurosis, suicide, broken relationships and unfulfilled lives, because we know something important is missing. We might even start wars to force us to realize death. Somehow, however, even gross slaughter slips by us with the smallest passage of time.
So, many of us court death to fill that hole in our minds made by our incomplete measure of reality. Still, it is always someone else who dies, for if we truly believed in our mortality, we would not live as we do. We would live fully for the day, either in revelry or in reverence.
Not long ago, as incomplete as my reality was, I often chose revelry. Now, I would hope to choose reverence, not because it is the right thing to do – although it is – but because it is the only way to embrace reality, and with that, to find integrity and the beginning of wisdom.
But granting us the courage to face death is not the final goal of reverence.
I have just finished the four-day travail of another retreat at our church, which often found me banging away on a nylon-string guitar with a pick to ty to get that old-time- religion sound. I literally play a small part, however, as the truly holy stuff is found in the silence of the darkened church. This year, while sitting quietly in what is called “Adoration” (of the consecrated host), we all noticed with astonishment that the smoke from the incense drifted through the shafts of light as if alive. It was almost shocking and even a little unnerving. Not long after, the normal church service was the most intensely devout that I had ever witnessed. It was truly taken as intended, to bring us into holy time. But for me, the most fulfilling unexpectedly came from the “laying-on of hands” that was done by people as ordinary as the rest of us.
It almost didn’t happen for me. Everything was running late and the music team had only five minutes left before we had to disappear into a side room to practice with the piano man for the upcoming mass. For some reason, I felt a real need to be there. But as I was wondering what to do, the people on the ‘hands team’ unexpectedly came up from behind and began their little ritual by placing their hand on my shoulders and whispering stuff I could not hear. There was nothing special about it at first until about ten seconds passed.
Then something extraordinary happened. The darkness behind my closed eyes was lit by a sprinkle of glitter like fine snow that seemed to illuminate a vacuum of infinite space. The subtlety of it was a big part of the message. I was let to know that the “snow” was the love of God – not a corny romantic thing, but a force of ecstasy – that invisibly held together the entire universe. There was no agony or doubt or suffering or death in this, because it was not only infinite, but eternal. When everything is seen in its wholeness, it spoke silently, it is perfect and immortal.
This, I was led to understand, was the true reality. Given that the eternal vision is true, we understand that death is not the reality. Rather, it is the bridge that allows us to cross the river of forgetfulness, so that we might part from the land of the mindfully dead – our everyday world - into the eternity beyond death. Death, then, is only the expression of the limitations of our gross material reality, to which we are held by both physical and mental gravity. Since we have convinced ourselves that this is all there is, we are terrified of leaving this world. Yet it is only in this world where we can find terror, for it embraces the illusion of contingency and eternal extinction. The gurus in the caves of the Himalayas know full well how the corporeal death of a fully realized soul (or God) such as Jesus could allow him to bring us across the river of death to the eternal life of the spiritual.
It is the way of the Holy Spirit, however, that we might see over that river before death. We cannot be delivered there without death, but we can be shown the way and given a glimpse of that destiny. If that sight is held long enough, then the hold of death is loosened to the degree that death no longer sparks fear. It is how the martyred saints were able to go to their often gruesome demise with a song in their hearts.
My time with the Holy Spirit was far too brief for such enlightenment. However, it has brought me to understand that reverence of the holy is another way to narrow our focus so that we might encounter the Holy Spirit in the flotsam of the world. Such focus often comes from close encounters with death – there are no atheists in foxholes – but that is not always necessary. In eternity, however that is experienced, we see that death has been realized and overcome. So it was that Daniel could face the lion without fear. In the marvel of grace as light as snow, it might be given us to see that the eternal whole is held together not with fear, but with a peace beyond understanding.
It is odd how sometimes we are stalked by non-predators. In a recent case, I was told of a book by my auto mechanic, Death in the Long Grass, by Peter Capstick, about his adventures as a big-game hunter guide in Africa. I even wrote the title down on the back of the bill (for back brakes, about six hundred bucks. Talk about big game prices) but that disappeared on the floor of the Jeep, as most things written down on the road do. But Capstick is a persistent hunter. As I was leaving a dinner party, I looked over the bookcase of the host, noting some obscure and fading book (from 1904 I was to find) about human sexuality. Of course I had to pick it up, for they knew as much about human sexuality then as now, but how were they forced to write about it? But as the host took it from the shelf for me to view, he said, “Oh, and this guy is a great author. Give him a try.” Of course it was Capstick and his Long Grass book. The host insisted I borrow it, and I needed no more prodding.
It is mostly fun stuff, light-reading adventure candy that imparts real information. Male lions, for instance, measure close to ten feet long, weigh 500 pounds, and can sprint one hundred yards in 3 seconds. That is usually a longer distance than the hunter gets, and even that distance gives barely enough time to point the gun. Man-eaters are also usually not toothless and dying oldsters, but healthy specimens often in the prime of life. To them, we are just meat. Humbling indeed.
But it is not all fluff. The author often tries to explain why one would put oneself unnecessarily in such danger as hunting lions or elephants. He grasps and tries to nail it. It is, he says, a test of oneself; it is like climbing the Matterhorn or driving in a speed race; it is facing your greatest fears and conquering them; and most tellingly for me, it is an attempt to grasp a greater slice of life. That last bit is the key, pointing our way to what is really wrong with the world.
A greater slice of life: why should we need it? If we force ourselves to think about it, we all understand. It is that, because of our fear of the real, we push our very real and imminent mortality behind us. With that, we leave behind the essence of life. For instance, many people I know have been diagnosed with very bad forms of cancer. I feel for them very much, but still, it is them. I cannot fully admit that I might well be the next one to fall. It is true that we should not worry about things we cannot control – this we are told by Jesus Christ himself – but to live life to the fullest, we must fully face what it is. Without that, we eventual are lost in a gray neutral zone of meaninglessness.
Still, we cannot bear it; so we build a world as well as we can to keep our minds off of it. Cancer? That one over there got it because he smoked, or worked on brake linings, or ate too much fatty foods. Heart attack? Fatty foods again, or lack of exercise or not enough spinach. Whatever. We deflect the obvious. Like a member of a herd of gazelles, we look on dispassionately at our poor cousin who is currently being disappeared by a pack of lions. Bad news, but he’s not us. Time to get back to grazing, or in my case, to March Madness.
Again, we should not dwell at all times on our inevitable demise, but we must admit to it or pay the consequences. These include neurosis, suicide, broken relationships and unfulfilled lives, because we know something important is missing. We might even start wars to force us to realize death. Somehow, however, even gross slaughter slips by us with the smallest passage of time.
So, many of us court death to fill that hole in our minds made by our incomplete measure of reality. Still, it is always someone else who dies, for if we truly believed in our mortality, we would not live as we do. We would live fully for the day, either in revelry or in reverence.
Not long ago, as incomplete as my reality was, I often chose revelry. Now, I would hope to choose reverence, not because it is the right thing to do – although it is – but because it is the only way to embrace reality, and with that, to find integrity and the beginning of wisdom.
But granting us the courage to face death is not the final goal of reverence.
I have just finished the four-day travail of another retreat at our church, which often found me banging away on a nylon-string guitar with a pick to ty to get that old-time- religion sound. I literally play a small part, however, as the truly holy stuff is found in the silence of the darkened church. This year, while sitting quietly in what is called “Adoration” (of the consecrated host), we all noticed with astonishment that the smoke from the incense drifted through the shafts of light as if alive. It was almost shocking and even a little unnerving. Not long after, the normal church service was the most intensely devout that I had ever witnessed. It was truly taken as intended, to bring us into holy time. But for me, the most fulfilling unexpectedly came from the “laying-on of hands” that was done by people as ordinary as the rest of us.
It almost didn’t happen for me. Everything was running late and the music team had only five minutes left before we had to disappear into a side room to practice with the piano man for the upcoming mass. For some reason, I felt a real need to be there. But as I was wondering what to do, the people on the ‘hands team’ unexpectedly came up from behind and began their little ritual by placing their hand on my shoulders and whispering stuff I could not hear. There was nothing special about it at first until about ten seconds passed.
Then something extraordinary happened. The darkness behind my closed eyes was lit by a sprinkle of glitter like fine snow that seemed to illuminate a vacuum of infinite space. The subtlety of it was a big part of the message. I was let to know that the “snow” was the love of God – not a corny romantic thing, but a force of ecstasy – that invisibly held together the entire universe. There was no agony or doubt or suffering or death in this, because it was not only infinite, but eternal. When everything is seen in its wholeness, it spoke silently, it is perfect and immortal.
This, I was led to understand, was the true reality. Given that the eternal vision is true, we understand that death is not the reality. Rather, it is the bridge that allows us to cross the river of forgetfulness, so that we might part from the land of the mindfully dead – our everyday world - into the eternity beyond death. Death, then, is only the expression of the limitations of our gross material reality, to which we are held by both physical and mental gravity. Since we have convinced ourselves that this is all there is, we are terrified of leaving this world. Yet it is only in this world where we can find terror, for it embraces the illusion of contingency and eternal extinction. The gurus in the caves of the Himalayas know full well how the corporeal death of a fully realized soul (or God) such as Jesus could allow him to bring us across the river of death to the eternal life of the spiritual.
It is the way of the Holy Spirit, however, that we might see over that river before death. We cannot be delivered there without death, but we can be shown the way and given a glimpse of that destiny. If that sight is held long enough, then the hold of death is loosened to the degree that death no longer sparks fear. It is how the martyred saints were able to go to their often gruesome demise with a song in their hearts.
My time with the Holy Spirit was far too brief for such enlightenment. However, it has brought me to understand that reverence of the holy is another way to narrow our focus so that we might encounter the Holy Spirit in the flotsam of the world. Such focus often comes from close encounters with death – there are no atheists in foxholes – but that is not always necessary. In eternity, however that is experienced, we see that death has been realized and overcome. So it was that Daniel could face the lion without fear. In the marvel of grace as light as snow, it might be given us to see that the eternal whole is held together not with fear, but with a peace beyond understanding.
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