Rhythm of Life

I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting hospitals as of late.

It’s an interesting place, the hospital.  It’s like all of humanity and its joys and hurts and brokenness merge together in one space. I’ve encountered people over the last month who are walking with their loved ones through death and I’ve encountered people who are bringing their loved ones home in good health. These institutions contain the best days of our lives and the worst.

The veil between life and death is so thin in this place. And it has made me think a lot about death and dying and the way that we in the western world so thoroughly avoid these topics.  It’s difficult to think about dying, so we just don’t.

I think about other cultures and the funerals I’ve seen on the news where there is wailing and lamenting and a sea of people transparently grieving in the streets. And there was a time when I judged those people. How primitive of them, to act that way. To actually admit their brokenness in public like that, how non PC of them.

The closer death comes to my heart and life, the more open I am to sitting with my own mortality, the more I recognize that we are the primitive ones, not the folks who are true to themselves and their grief.

We try to be so controlled don’t we? Funerals in churches, wearing our finest black clothes, no viewing of the body, quiet weeping into tissues, trying to hold it all together. How sterile, how broken we are when a widow apologizes for weeping at her own spouse’s funeral.

There is a distance between us and death, we try to separate ourselves from grief and hurt. And it only winds up creating more grief and hurt and feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Death comes for all of us at some point. That’s one of a handful of things that ties us to the rest of humanity and the rest of the natural world really. We were all born and we will all die.

And somehow this brings me great comfort. Death is a part of the journey we are all on. It’s the natural, normal progression of things. From ashes we came and to ashes we return. 

So, why not grieve in earnest? Why not be transparent in our lamentations of this short life?

Our connection to one another and to the Holy is so vital during the hard spaces in our lives. How can we not reach out and connect? Why would we ever try to hide our grief? What good does that do us or anyone else?

We have a choice each day whether we live in transparency or whether we hide our true selves.

Today I choose to live in transparency. I choose to connect and be in the midst of life and death. To recognize that there is space for both in my heart and in my mind. To extend a hand of help to those in grief. To walk alongside whomever is in my path today, to look them in the eyes and see their story and my own story and the story of all of humanity. 

Life and death. Birth and decay. Beauty and sadness.

May you be present today to whatever is going on in your life and in your heart. May you not shy away from grief but embrace it and learn from it and be open and honest about it. May you connect with others and enter into the rhythm of a life shared in honest community. 
And may you find joy and peace and comfort even in the midst of brokenness.