Today, a new Essay, "Just the Ticket," under "Essays" in the website.  FK

Since reading the book on death (Singh, "Grace in Dying"), I have talked to three people about the phases the author has said ALL go through, particularly the one about panic (called Chaos). Surprisingly, all three denied that they would have this problem when they died.  I know what they mean, for we all know that death will come, and we all think that we are prepared for it.

This reminds me of a rather beautiful country/pop cross-over with the phrase, "If I die young, bury me in linen.." or something to that effect, evoking a beautiful but melancholy image of a beautiful young women covered in roses, leaving all to grieve.  Which also reminds me of Tom Sawyer's funeral, which he witnessed from the church balcony and which brought tears to his eyes, even though he knew very well that he was not dead.  In both cases, the death is envisioned by the superficial self as a handle-able, even poetic affair, all within the romantic aura that still permeates parts of our culture.  

However, the author reminds us that our ego-self cannot imagine its own death.  This is knowledge held in a repressed unconscious which, by definition, the ego has no access to.  By definition, the ego is separate from the "Ground of Being," by its very nature, that of a separate and autonomous self.  Thus, instead of finding the sad romantic image of death in our own death, we find chaos - a wild confusion at the crumbling of all our categories, including what we thought death was.  We will panic, in one way or another.  

Anyone who has taken a meditative path knows this, for at some point, the shadow, or repressed aspects of ourselves, begins to come out.  This is not the Ground of Being, but the safeguards we have placed in our development to prevent the Ground from coming out.  These safeguards are not pleasant.  They evoke fear and attempt to turn us back, as if  wearing a sign, "here dragons be."  It is the unknown and forbidden land.  And it is nothing, only the start, of where the chaos of death begins.  

Now, it could be my delivery - no one likes to be told how he or she will behave in the future, as if there were no individual control.  But that is exactly the point: at the closing in of death, there is no individual control.  There is no escape.  Our "selves" are cornered.  The only recourse left in the end is to surrender. And it is here at surrender where, the author claims, we begin to find our true selves.  However, according to her samples, even those who understand this must pass through the phase of chaos and terror, for it, death, is that total and that "other."  

It reminds me of my fearless youth, when I eagerly took psychedelics to "see the face of God."  The pattern is the same in this as in that of death - although at first there is hilarity in everything, as everything we have believed is unmasked as so obviously contrived.  But then it gets to ourselves - that what we think of ourselves is just as contrived.  There then comes the panic.  I recall one time reaching this peak, and coming to the conclusion that I simply could not live in this chaos (called "suicidal panic" by the author.  It does not necessarily come to everyone, but is a phase for some in Chaos).  I then stoically went to the chicken coup and sat down amid the feathers and straw to calmly die.  I did not die.  Rather, in the giving up of a resolution to the mess, a revelation of wholeness and beauty came.  I ended up never more glad to be alive (this, or another episode like it, is in the first chapter of my book, "Dream Weaver").  Unfortunately, I have long since fully regained the false ego.  I have no doubt that I will come again into this frightening land.  As for the psychedelics, it would take a lot of money - or maybe an impossible amount of money or something else - to have me go through that again.  It's that scary.

I do not believe in death.  Almost none of us really do.  Yet, like the existence of the Ground of Being (aka, the All or God), we know underneath or beyond it all, somewhere beyond our guarded gates, that it is real, more real than the lives we live.  We have given death a name, but like the name God, we do not, cannot know what it really is until we live it, become part of it.  But to do this we must "die to ourselves," never a comfortable thing.

And so I understand the affront of those who deny that their death will be so laced with fear and confusion.  To admit to that would be to admit to the limitations of our ego-selves, the soul source of reality to that same self.  Chaos is a fearful thing.  We can see it as it plays into the inevitability of war for our species, for to act upon chaos is so often thought to be a means of controlling it.  But as history tells us, we are more often surprised that chaos is chaos, beyond our control, better left to the natural order of things which will arrange it all perfectly, for all of us, in the end.  FK                                

As Cal waits in his hospital room for triple bypass surgery, it might be a good idea to skip talking specifically about death. However, Singh's "Grace in Dying" has brought out another topic for analysis, one spoken of many times before in this blog: are we of the world culture an evolving society, or are we dragging ourselves towards Armageddon? This was brought out by Singh in many ways, including this observation: "we"- our socio-cultural reality - is the collective view of all of us involved.  

If one thinks that our version of reality is true and not subjective, I bring again the example of the Hawaiian god Lono, who was thought by the native Hawaiians to come again at a certain date (they were sharp observers of the stars, particularly for navigation) at a certain place.  Sure enough, Captain Cook arrived at the right place and the right time, as certain to be the god Lono as the priests could tell.  Here they feted him, fed his men and sent women to them and bid them all farewell as they left to continued to move around the rest of the Islands in a counter-clockwise motion (as I recall - in any case, he went in the right direction) and then landed again at the spot that legend said Lono would land after taking exactly that voyage.  According to the Hawaiian scripture, at this juncture they were to kill him.  All was a part of the life-death-new life cycle they believed they and their gods were involved with, and Cook did exactly as he should have, as did the Hawaiians.  Cook was killed and reportedly eaten, as he should have been.  A new era did indeed begin then.  The prophets had been right.

But they hadn't been, at least according to Cook's point of view.   All was coincidence.  There was no god.  Ignorant superstition had mistaken he and his men for something they were not, leading to a change that the Hawaiians could not possibly have envisioned.  As far as our understanding goes, it was a curious though meaningless synchronicity.  

In that thought, however, comes the idea that we of the West, now the expanding world culture, have it right.  But according to Singh, we do not, not by a long shot.  All reality systems built on separation are partial, and in being partial, are ultimately false. Even science admits that every one of its theories have been proven to be wrong with time through partial knowledge.  The role of science, scientists say, is to continue to build towards a greater knowledge - but this knowledge will never be complete, and in that, will always be false.

However, just as the Hawaiians built on a foundation of gods and cycles that is incomplete and ultimately false, so are our assumptions - our underlying assumptions - partial and false. They have to be, for they separate us from the ALL, the Truth. As such, in the greater scheme of things  beyond practical survival skills, we are blind as bats.  Our assumptions about the greater role of ourselves as selves and our society at large are built on sand.  And yet they are built, for we weave order out of a chaos of parts, just as the astrologers of old wove figures and myths out of the stars.  To find our our direction, our collective future, then, we must discover the nature of the sand we have built upon.  

Or not.  Spiritual evolution would have it that we will discover a firmer plot of sand, and thus build further and higher until another, then another base is found until - we approach the All, Godhead. But is this true?

Kathleen Singh shows us that before we die, we must surrender our false self - our model of ourselves and the world - before we move to a higher, ineffable  level of the spiritual - a true or at least far truer realm.  But can this be done culturally without a cultural death?  If so, in a cultural death, mustn't we go through the pains and travails of death before we reach the higher truth?  In other words, if culture is a social collective, mustn't it be build on the same crumbling sand that our personal realities are built upon? And then, mustn't that have to crumble before enlightenment can ensue?   Aren't all cultural models incomplete, with built-in destruction modes, just as all bodies and egos are?

This would not necessarily mean mega-nuclear death for us, but rather "death" as the Hawaiians experienced with their own culture.  I leave it to them to decide if they have since risen to a higher realm, or are still in that process.  But the movement of building the ego, and then letting go in the dying process reminds us that such great change does not happen easily; it will not be done by gradual and comfortable steps.  If one must die to oneself before finding oneself, so must a collective die to itself to advance the collective.  It would seem to me that we are in for some wild rides before we find the peace of a New Age.  FK              
           

Last Thursday was spent in the glory of an unexpected late summer, the bright, dry heat lighting the land below the hill on which I was dissecting a massive oak tree for firewood. Beautiful, I would take the earplugs out for a break and listen to the sounds of early autumn, in these parts often resounding with the startling, dinosaur-like cackle of the Sand Hill cranes, who know more than any other bird the way the winds blow. A day like this is seemingly eternal, but in late September, you know it is a mirage, a chimera to be absorbed with everything you have, because you know it won't last.

It was in posting Thursday's blog that a frequent contributor to the Quiet Voice, "Cal", found that I would soon have a lot of dry oak wood, and he wrote to ask if he could pick up a trunk-full of the smaller stuff for his outside burner after work.  Sure, I said, and at a little past 5 PM, he found me sitting in the old jeep, trailer attached, ready for action. 

"You want some wood, let's go get it.  You wouldn't mind helping me fill the rest of the trailer while your at it, would you?"  With my son gone to school, this aging guy never lets an opportunity for helping hands go by.  Of course Cal had to say "yes."
 
And so we loaded on the hill overlooking miles of fields and distant woods as the sun began to cool towards the horizon, the perfect day melding into the perfect evening.  Cal not only helped load, but unload back at the wood splitter, even though the trunk to his car was then full.  And why not?  On such a day, work outside is nothing, and we could also talk.  Both of us are a little too good at this, but I got in a conversation about  the startling book I've been profiling in the blog, Kathleen Singh's "Grace in Dying."

I spoke of how it was really having an impact. In it she describes perfectly the development of the ego, the "false self", its use to build a platform of focused attention (its purpose spiritually) and how it was impossible to get around for most people until death. It is so difficult because its (the ego's) very survival depends on a separation of itself from everything else, particularly the Ground Force which is the source of it and everything else.  For this reason it fears to its limit the death of the body that it understands as its only house for its existence - the only existence it can envision.

I explained how I feared death, too, very much, and how my spiritual practice as I grow older has been to get a better handle on the death that I knew was coming closer.  

"But Fred, why do you fear death?" It was a puzzled question, in the nature of "why should you fear something that is so natural and happens to everyone?"  I told him I do have a small fear about going into non-existence, a black hole, but didn't really believe in that.  Rather, my biggest fear was the something that might await me.  We were not taught about hell for nothing.  Still, I think he remained unconvinced.  What was there really to fear?

It was my fault, really, for not explaining it well, but that passed as most conversations do.  The next day was another beautiful one, and after writing a quick blog (which was erased by the website. Take a deep breath) I went back to the wood chore while the ground was hard enough to not leave tracks.  Coming back mid- afternoon, I checked the blinking light on the phone that said a message had been left.  It was from Cal: "Hey, went to the hospital to check on some chest pains and they're sending me in an ambulance to the (big city) hospital.  Said I had artery blockage and might need a stint."  Originally, he was going to come over that night and we were to have a fire and sit around and drink beer and smoke cigars under a perfect sky and talk about the meaning of life and so on.  That would have to wait, he added with a laugh.

As it turned out, he would need a triple or quadruple bypass, and is nervously waiting for it in a hospital bed as I write.  We visited him Sunday, and as I was leaving he said, "that was quite a coincidence that we were talking about death just the day before. I think I acted too casually about dying.  Now I know what you mean."  

Yes - it is not just that death comes like "a thief in the night," as Jesus said in one of his parables, but that it always, always brings fear.  Most people do not understand this because they cannot believe they will truly die.  That would upset the fantasy of the primacy of the ego, or false self.  When we are truly confronted with it and there is no place else to hide, we must fear. We must fear because our reality is crumbling and we are being left with nothing.  For myself, I say, "picture yourself in a small boat on the ocean in the middle a wild storm, confronting the certainty that you are about to be swallowed by the cold, gray depths.  Tell me then (my own ego) that you will kick back and sigh, saying "Oh, well, I've lived a good life.  This is as good a time to go as any."  Oh, no.  I would scream and wail and pray until the boat tipped and I was breathing in water.  I could not help but do so.  

We might think that we will be comfortable going into that dark night, but Kathleen Singh tells us in no uncertain terms that we will not be, not until we pass through the crucible and learn that we are not who we think we are.  It is not until then, when we see the plots our "self" has made to maintain its fantasy of being, not until we see that there is a deeper, authentic self that is tied to the All, that will we be able to lie comfortably.  For most of us, this does not come until no doubt is left that we are going to die.  It is a bad time for all, the time of heroes.  Only the assurance that we will all pass the test makes it tolerable in contemplation; only the assurance that, although we cannot truly understand the word in our present selves, life is Love and it is a grander universe than any of us can now think, once the crucible - the ordeal, the time on the cross - is passed.  FK     
  

I had thought to mention a critic of Richard Rohr's work today, one that I had found on the internet, but there is no time for that now.  A giant, dead old oak awaits my chainsaw and the work must begin soon.  There is less and less light now, and what was once in abundance must be husbanded and used to best effect. Winter will come, it always comes, and many things not done now will have to wait, forcing us into an indoor dormancy like the living roots of sleeping trees.  But it is just as well.  Last night I bought a book on death.

I do not like chainsaws but cannot get myself to work for hours with a saw and ax when chainsaws can work so well - when they work.  But they can cut off fingers and hands and even legs in less time than seems possible.  They get stuck in trees, and the growling roar blocks the sound of the wood as it is about to fall. With a large tree, one has to note carefully its every twitch, its pressure on the saw or lack thereof, to determine when the sinews that hold it upright are finally broken, and in which direction it will fall.  Still, it can twist or kick back, thousands of pounds, tons that can take off your head in an instant.  It is madness, really, but that's what we do to save money or to make it.  I am nervous about it as I speak.  It is a monster that has lived for over one hundred years, and it will obey the laws of physics no matter my good humor or moral standing.  

It is a monster like death.  It will do what it will do and there is nothing to stop it.  Touch it with that maddening saw and it is like being born - our lives are put into danger the instant we start on the journey.  Hopefully, I will live past this tree.  I will not live past life.  Death will come like the cold winds in November, no matter what.

Kathleen Singh, in her book "The Grace in Dying," writes from her experience as a hospice worker, one of the hardest jobs the world might have.  She said that at the beginning of her work, a single word would form in her mind as she went from house to house, from hospital to convalescent home: tragedy.  The terror and hopelessness of the relatives, the depression of the dying all brought up that one word.  But we know she could not write a book about that, and soon she lets us in on what time and experience has taught her: that, somewhere in the dying process,an epiphany is reached, not just by a few, but by everyone.  Some in the dying process - she calls it the near-dying experience - reach it sooner, weeks before actual death and have told her such things as "I am being filled with light" or "I can understand now..." Others reach it only at the moment of death, where she can see the radiance of eyes and skin and feel the relief, as if a great simmering energy were let go.  In all cases, she says a "hush," a sacred silence fills the area - often followed by the grief of the relatives, to be sure, but always, always bringing that sense of the ineffable, of the ultimate in understanding.

Our death, then, is our Nirvana, our Risen moment, our glory. Early in the book she has intimated that perhaps this does not last past death for some, but that all have it, at least at that moment.  Death, she said, is not to be feared. Death, she says, shows that we are loved.

We will see what else she brings to us in the following blogs, but I know the feeling from my own experiences.  I have written about deaths before, a few recently, of the girl in the car and my father. With the girl, there was the element of tragedy because of her health and her age.  With my father, it was simply the hush, the silence in the depth of unspoken knowledge, of the logos as the Greeks called it, the Word that is beyond words, straight to meaning.  It was there for the girl, too, palpable behind the human tragedy.  Singh is right - death is our call to grace, our reward for simply living, whether as heathens, Christians or as pick-pockets.  Everything else is small in comparison, and no one can take away the freedom that is in our personal death - no dictator or concentration camp commander can control us then.  

But still I fear it, probably to the end.  But it is a strange fear, for it compels, not repels.  That is why I read these books, why I write this blog and website, and why you read it (among others, I know).  It is the secret, the key to the mystery, the one thing that drives the characters in the best of plots.  This, though, is no work of fiction.  We are the main characters in the greatest plot ever made, and sooner or later we come to the cliff-hanger - and drop off.  The resolution, unlike in novels, is what happens after we drop off the cliff. 

More to come from Kathleen Singh.  We will see what the living metaphor of lives on the edge can bring to our own understanding, to our own key to our own mystery.  FK                               

Old photos and movies came to mind while reading last night. One I recalled is of my grandparents with his family in front of his grandmother's house in New Haven @ 1910.  He is standing there with a cousin (I think), he in knickers, she in a pinafore (I think that's what those little girl dresses are called), their hair done too neatly, a look of mild annoyance on their faces.  Of course we first look to the people in such photos, this of my long-dead grandfather when he was years younger than my own son.  But what grabbed me after inspecting the oddness and sameness of my relatives in a time long gone was the size of the trees in the yard.  Probably maple, or so I see in my mind, with girths almost as broad as the children are tall.  It first struck me that "those were the days" when trees were grand, but on second thought, understood that 1910 New Haven was no outpost of a recently claimed wilderness.  Its trees should be no greater than ours today.  And it is true.  Look at any older house with a yard and you will see those same great trees.  But why did they look so special in the picture?

In fact, I have several pictures of myself and family in the woods and the trees often strike me in the same way - huge, towering presences that make us look small and insignificant.  I have found that this is the same with those "small" movies, the artsy ones that are done for the art rather than the big-box, and how the cameras capture the scenery.  There is one that was something of a hit, "The Last of the Mohegans", the modern one with Daniel Day Lewis that brings us into the forest primeval.  Nature towers above man in all but the most action-packed scenes.  We see this more so in the quiet lesser movies - "Nebraska" for instance, where it is not the trees but the space, the expanse of land and the sky.  There is one point at which the main character visits his old farm house, now in ruins.  About runs the corn to the horizon, and the sky, limitless of floating clouds, give a sense of the infinite in its remote quietness.  

These pictures seem special, but they are not.  Beyond the city, nature is always overwhelming, far greater than any of us, but we seldom notice it.  Those big trees are in my back yard.  That big sky is just beyond my driveway.  I do not usually notice them because they are normal, and they do not draw attention to themselves.  Unlike the dog or the family or friends, they simply are.  It is because they require no response from us that they are seldom noticed.  But when they are we are amazed, as if something new has come into our lives.

They are always there, however, all around us - sky, sea, trees, hills.  They are not special, so much so that we do not notice them, but they ARE special exactly because we do not normally notice them.  They are our backdrop, our reality, which is so seldom seen from our busy social minds - from the False Mind, as Richard Rohr calls it.  But this presence is there, not only within us, but without.  It is within stillness that we see them and ourselves more for what they and we are - these great, impossible, portentous creations that sit in the silence of the vastness - of truth.  

It is this that we find in the stillness of deep ritual - the treating of even the small as a great miracle, a gift.  And it is from seeing from silence, from the stilled mind, that we understand our impossible sacredness, not only in ritual but everywhere.  

It is this that the film director sees - at one point, the tombstones against the great, silent, beautiful sky of Nebraska.  They, these reminders of our mortality, are nothing compared to the vastness of life.  And it is in this that we see what is our true self, for in understanding the presence of the vastness, we intuit to ourselves that we know the truth and have always known the truth.  The tomb stones are our false selves that die, and the sky, our true selves that live in limitless and timeless freedom.  

So my grandfather is long dead, his picture a mere curiosity, but the trees behind him tell the story.  He is beyond the fashion and customs of his time and among the greatness that was once only a whisper in the unnoticed witness of the trees.  FK           

Decades ago I read the book "Shogun," which was made into a TV miniseries around 1980.  Its main plot revolved around the manipulation of warlords and a 17th century Englishman shipwrecked and caught in the endless and futile whirlwind of violent people vying for power - much like Medieval Europe.  In it we find unbelievable cruelty (again, much like Medieval Europe) and odd customs and beliefs.  One in particular stood out for me: the Tea Ceremony.  In the novel, a young married woman is having an affair with the Englishman.  She has to abort her pregnancies for fear that the racial mix will be discovered, but she and her shogun husband are clearly, in the Japanese way, not meshing.  The shogun wishes, against hope, to bring back the marriage and thus proposes the Tea Ceremony for he and his wife.

The detail was well described in the book, and I can recall being both fascinated with it and perplexed - what was it all about?  It took place in near silence, the two playing their roles as husband and wife, candles lit, the proper dress warn and so on.  But it was the near silence, every slight noise calibrated, that made the difference.  I believe I now understand it, as a moment - a moment in time sacrilized, so that all time might be sacrilized.

It is the purpose of ritual to make the ordinary sacred, to draw together more than one to share the experience of meditation.  All religions have it, as far as I know.  Among the Hoti Indians of Venezuela with whom I lived, they had the Awato Fest, an all-night ritual that brought humans and animals and stars and gods together in the sacred space of increase, of fertility.  At a revivalist meeting, I saw people cry and fall down as the Holy Spirit took hold of them in dramatic fashion.  But still, it is in quiet contemplation where I believe ritual has the greatest affect.

In the Catholic Church, I take all but the readings from the Bible (especially the Gospels) with great boredom.  It is not until the blessing of the Eucharist - the sacramental  turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood - that things settle down into a sacramental stillness that has lasting affects.  My son is simply bored throughout, but I believe most sincere adults would get the sense of spirituality in that space even if they were not Christian - just as I now understand the Tea Ceremony.  Both are the realization that we, within us, can experience the Holy.  This can also be done in the silence of the woods or the ocean, but most know what I mean.  

This is the sacred-filling thought and action that Richard Rohr encourages us to seek in "Immortal Diamond," to find the holy that is within us and that is all about us.  Using Biblical quotations throughout, he shows how this was exhorted again and again, without common understanding.  It is this, this pointing too, that was not only lost to readers of the Bible in literalism, but to our society at large.  Until the 8th century, he claims, the world was a magical place, but literalism, combined with the quest for power, took control - much as practices such as the Tea Ceremony became an afterthought to the Buddhist warlords of Japan.  


Rorh is of the Tielhard de Chardin school, which claims that the Resurrection of Christ was our turning point, or at least symbolic of our times; that what we seek is a transformation, not continuity, like the resurrection, making us an evolving world.  And so we are met with the division of the Perennial Tradition again: we see that the world lost its wonder, by and large, over a thousand years ago; for the optimistic, Christ signals a positive turning  point amid a falling appreciation of the sacred; for those who simply follow history, the trajectory seems downward.  


I will push that aside for now, for the spirit, as Rohr says, is always within us.  It can come into our lives when we open ourselves to it, in ritual or in magical places in nature or man-made structures.  The point is, that even in the religions that teach us original sin, either through Adam or through Karma, we can reclaim the sacred any time we want.  It is always within us.  FK           
  

In Christianity, much is made of the suffering of Jesus.  This is particularly true in Latin countries, where it became something of a morbid joke among us, for in every Mexican church, there is the "bleeding Christ," a depiction of Jesus in agony as he bleeds on the cross.  On the other hand, In "Immortal Diamond," Fr. Rohr generally emphasizes the potential joy that awaits us when we transcend the "False Self" and find our point of union with God. God, says Rorh, is about freedom, even if it means the freedom to create horrors (which are worked on to create the the final tapestry that is Love), while humans are about "stability and control, even if it means boredom and death."  God, and the creation He made, is about love, beauty and truth, all wedded together in a union, a relationship, that is the meaning of heaven. It is coming to us all, sooner or later - depending on when we find our "inner diamond," our eternal link with God.

I have poured out several great points of Rohr here and will get into some of them in later blogs.  However, two things struck me about the tact he has taken: one, that Fr. Rohr's ideas coincide almost exactly with my own, albeit on a more knowledgeable level; and two, that he incorporates the "bleeding Christ" into our own lives, although not as deeply as I would often demand.  

On our mutual agreeability, I would like to say that great minds think alike, but know better.  Rather, I have always found that when others have my ideas, it is because we are a part of a movement of thought, however hidden that may be.  Rohr himself admits to gleaning from the Perennial Tradition, of which I have long been a part, that sees life itself as a metaphor of God - and the literary metaphors of religion as metaphors for God in life. The latter are not to be read as literal, but as pointing a way to the greater truth that is beyond our limited rational verbiage - just as our lives are not to be seen in the deadness of the restraints our society has placed on it.  Christ was about freedom, yes - freedom from our false self, which then allows us access to the limitless creativity of the Source.  All true, all wonderful...but...

In contemplating the bloody Christ, I have often thought that we humans usually die in misery as well, and suffer insupportable sorrows.  They are inevitable.  Someday we will all be told, "you have cancer" or "we will have to take off your leg because of diabetes," or, eventually, "you are going to die - soon" and often these deaths are painful indeed, lasting far longer than the day of suffering that Jesus had.  We might also see our children die, or become addicted, or themselves develop horrible diseases.  We are, in effect, most probably going to suffer at least as much as Jesus did on the cross.  And this is why my essays often have a dark side - for we must face this inevitability first before we can have true conviction in the greater light.  Untold numbers of people have lost faith in God because of their suffering, or the suffering of others.  "Why would a good God allow this to happen?," and it is a good question.  It is one that has to be answered.

"Immortal Diamond" does not linger in the dark side, but it is explaining it (as I continue to read) well in the metaphor that is life.  The Christ, as Rohr explains, is an "icon of our destiny," no more or less than the path each person must take to return to wholeness.  The Christ is the metaphor, while Jesus is us, the person.  His life is the life of all humans, of all truth - for no matter what, we must all "die to life to gain it." In another blog I have quoted Rohr quoting a hospice worker who said that life and death are exquisitely timed for release into the true and eternal self - that is, that the dying process helps us lose our false self and regain our true self.  And this is 'Jesus the Icon' - that we must die, often horribly, to gain Heaven, or union - die to ourselves as well as to our bodies. Thus is Christianity (as with other religions in other ways) a metaphor for life, and life a metaphor for the process, the relationship of the god within us to the God apart from us.  Thus are the change of seasons, of all death and regeneration a metaphor.  And so are the holy myths that make up religion - in myth, less than the superficial facts of science, but much much more in truth.  FK                 

"Hospice workers who have accompanied many deaths can tell you about this much better than I.  They often start as de facto therapists and cannot help but end up as spiritual directors by simply observing the process of transformations from the False Self to True Self in the dying process. Kathleen Dowling Singh goes so far as to that that 'the life and death of a human being is exquisitely calibrated to automatically produce union with Spirit' at the end." Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, pg. 32.

I wrote a few essays on witnessing death or dying, one "Dark Angel" and the other more recently about my father's death, and in both there was a remarkable sense of - being - about everything, as if it filled the air.  In "Dark Angel," a friend and I were almost to the cabin the in UP, driving the winding road through miles and miles of forest, when we came upon a small group of cars huddled in one area by an old gravel quarry.  We could feel it before we saw it, and then saw it - a car had gone off into the quarry square into a tree.  Supplies for camping were scattered about the road.  We stopped to see if we could help, and found that the driver, a very young man, was lying outside the car, leg twisted nearly to his ear.  Inside, though, was a very quiet girl, only 17 we were to find later.  We knew she was dead.  A few who felt for a pulse in her foot said so, but they didn't have to - a silence hung in the air that was palpable.  There was grim tragedy here because of her age, but the pall of death was neither grim or tragic - it "was," simply, and it was not "us."  We felt the presence of reality, and it was a shock.  Had it not been for the tragedy, we might have been uplifted by it.

With my father, I had come to visit him in his last months.  He slept nearly all the time, but woke up briefly to greet me when I entered.  I then began to talk about politics, which he had once loved, and to make gestures and sarcastic comments when suddenly I felt like a complete idiot.  He was not listening, but that is not what made me feel stupid - rather, the presence of nearing death made all my comments and concerns seem as nothing.  I was in the presence of the Real, the holy, and the rest was foolishness.

And such it is that Richard Rohr presence the False Self.  It is, he said, necessary to use to find our way back to our True Self, that self in God or eternity or the absolute (as the reader prefers), but it is only a tool - like religion.  Sin, claims Rohr, is not so much adultery and theft and all the rest, but the clinging to the False Self, which is and only can be ego.  It is selfishness itself, no matter how it cloaks itself.  In fact, he quotes Thomas Merton as saying, more or less, "be a fornicator, a cheat, a real bastard, be anything but a sanctimonious religious observer, " for it is the latter who feel too righteous to ever grow.  It is they who are stuck in their false self, which is the bottom line of sin.  No wonder Christ came for the sinners and berated the sanctimonious Pharisees. 

The True Self- more or less synonymous with "soul" - is beyond death.  Says Rohr, "we fear death for the imagined loss of an imagined individual."  The False Self dies, the Soul is eternal, our color, our particular flavor in the infinitude of God.  The True Self, can do no wrong - it is full and complete and as it should be, its foibles - for only pure God is perfect -  quickly corrected.  It cannot go to hell - only to the eternal.

Richard Rohr's take on the True Self resonates with everything I have experienced.  It does, when thought about, answer most concerns about evil and suffering in the world - certainly those on a grand scale, although that still needs some deeper explanation. I believe he will have more to say on this in the pages to come.  But we are left to wonder - if our False Self, our Social Self dies, is what is left recognizable?  Rohr claims that once it falls off, it is as if it never were, so obvious a mask that we do not think about it again.  We fear our loss of this, only to find that it was no loss at all.  And so the presence of death confirms: in its shadow, things become real.  This reality might shake our False Self, but when we peer behind it, we find a genuine being who is opening up to the mystery and truth of life.  And death, for the two Selves at this level, is no more than night that shifts into day that shifts into night, all one.  FK                    

A few nights ago we got a once-in-a-lifetime visit from the local priest, ostensibly for fund raising, but as it turned out, mostly for socializing. My wife is a convert from Southern Protestantism - not the Baptists, but the South has a general view on relations with pastors. For one thing, they vote them in or out, and so they have to perform.  For another, they (the pastors) have to show their humanity, but on a higher level.  They are, in other words, just like us but dedicated to being better and more learned in the sacred.