Sunday, March 12, 2017

The fleeting nature of transcendent perception or how I know that life is eternal...

Yesterday I attended the funeral of my father's life-long best friend. His funeral was exactly one year from my own mother's funeral. 

This past Monday we had a small family gathering on the one year anniversary of my mother's passing. We met at the columbarium where my mother and my niece are interred and memorialized. I decided to mark the occasion by sharing an experience and a statement about my beliefs concerning the nature of our existence. My thoughts on this subject are always changing and my mind and heart are open to new perspectives and possibilities. I structured my thoughts for this occasion in theological
terms. I could have easily substituted secular language and used words like psyche or consciousness instead of soul. The infinite instead of God. But all of the possible uses of language fall short when attempting to describe the reality that remains hidden from us. Our brain is encased in bone. We only have five measly senses to make sense of everything. Think about how the tiny slits in our eyes let in just enough light to build our entire vision of the universe right in our own heads. It's one miracle in a host of miracles that give rise to our very existence. Here are the words that I read at the memorial:


God gave us five senses. Five senses that allow us to witness the magic of a sunset, to be moved by the beauty of a single note on a violin as a bow makes its way across a perfectly tuned string, to taste the lingering sweetness of ice cream as it melts on our tongue, to breathe in the smell of Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad’s house, and to feel the embrace of those we love.

And as wondrous as those five senses are, they are woefully inadequate to interpret the nature of life and God.

Our mother connected in a special way with Myers Park Baptist’s covenant which says that we are a people on a journey of faith. These words buoyed our mother when the ocean, called cancer, insisted that she swim in its perilous waves. Her steadfast belief in her journey of faith lead her to moments of calm and tranquility in the midst of the crashing waves of chemo treatment and the rip currents of recurring cancer. In those moments of calm, I like to believe that Mom tapped into a transcendent power that lies within each of us. A power to tap into a sixth sense. A sense that allows us to catch fleeting glimpses of God’s world. God’s world is eternal and brings us comfort in the face of our own mortality.

Ten years ago I stood only a few yards from where we are right now. The family had gathered on the grass, beneath the shade of the large oaks that surround us now. The occasion was Anna’s funeral. I can remember the scene as Dr. Shoemaker calmly talked us through the planned order of the celebration of Anna’s life. The breezes that were blowing around us were unusual. Shifting direction and intensity. The sun was breaking in and out through the boughs of the oaks as the winds parted them here, and then there. I could feel the shifting wind on my skin and I closed my eyes to soak up the feeling of the breezy sensation and I tuned all my attention to that feeling of the air on my skin. It was at that moment that I felt myself tap into that sixth sense of transcendent perception.

For a fleeting moment, time stood still and I was instantly connected to everything. The true nature of God and the universe touched me in a way that I had not expected. The divine embrace I felt gave me an awareness of our connectedness to everything and therefore to God and then swirled off with the breeze. The brief experience was a milestone in my own journey of faith. It marked the moment that doubt about the eternal nature of our soul was erased from my worldview. I was overcome with gratitude to God for allowing this to happen at just the time when I needed it most. All this happened as all of you stood around me. I wondered if you felt it too.

I take comfort in the knowledge that Mom is still with us. And I don’t mean as a memory, although those are sweet to have. And certainly we miss seeing her eyes light up when she talks about the Moravian Love Feast. We miss her lovely singing voice, but even more we miss the voice of insistence and persistence imploring us that being part of a family was the most important of all things. We miss the smell of her smoke alarm style cooking of green beans. But mostly we miss her touch, her embrace, and the warmth of her hugs.


Yet the warmth of her spirit is alive and well and within us all. The true essence of who she is never dies. Her true essence is love. Love permeates all things. Love surrounds us and dwells within us. The loving soul that we call Margaret, Mom, and Nana has never gone anywhere. She would never leave us and she never has. Love never dies.

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