Life and Death – Gifts in the Cycles

There sure has been a lot of this hanging around lately. Silly thing to say because really it always is, but lately some big ones have been happening in my life. When I was in Germany, I was fascinated by the amount of skulls and skeletons that were intertwined in both folk and religious art of the past. One phrase seemed to show up a lot. Translated it was – Keep Death Before Thee. At first it seemed slightly morbid but the more I have thought about this statement, the more I see it is a life affirmation. It is a rebirth of being conscious of what you are in by remembering where you are going.

Several years back my father told us he had ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and now he seems to be in his final year or maybe months. My wife’s godmother recently passed away as well. Tonight at dinner with her godfather, he questioned the reasoning why she had to pass away just before the birth of our first child.

I have been listening a lot to a song by Iron and Wine. It’s called Sodom, South Georgia from the Album Our Endless Numbered Days. The music behind it is sweet and sounds like a walk down a peaceful backwoods road in summer, where your legs find a happy pace. It is fingerpicker guitar and a tambourine and one man’s whispery kind voice.

Papa died smiling
Wide as the ring of a bell
Gone all star white
Small as a wish in a well
And Sodom, South Georgia
Woke like a tree full of bees
Buried in Christmas
Bows and a blanket of weeds

Papa died Sunday and I understood
All dead white boys say, "God is good"
White tongues hang out, "God is good"

Papa died while my
Girl Lady Edith was born
Both heads fell like
Eyes on a crack in the door
And Sodom, South Georgia
Slept on an acre of bones
Slept through Christmas
Slept like a bucket of snow

Papa died Sunday and I understood
All dead white boys say, "God is good"
White tongues hang out, "God is good"

In searching online for the lyrics I found this explanation from someone who calls themselves broken hallelujah at http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=3530822107858555069

"White tongues hang out... God is good."

White tongues are gravestones. The inscriptions are so pervasively - and in this case, hollowly - full of an unquestioning faith.

"Papa died sunday, and I... understood. All dead white boys say... God is good." But Beam [the song writer] doesn't give us a perspective on a speaker that has much choice or freedom to think any other way; there is something in the tone that is, if not ominous, as already suggested, deeply, deeply resigned.

That's the best word I can put to it: resigned. But there is a deeper beauty at work here, I would argue (as with most of Beam's work): "Papa died while my / Girl, lady Edith was born. / Both 'heads' felt like / Eyes on the crack in the door."

This is, I think, a song about the circularity of existence - the coming and going, and the speaker being somehow caught in a place where he can't fight it, but still cannot help but wonder at the power of it. The pathos in certain lines - "Papa died smiling / Wide as the ring of a bell" and "Slept through Christmas / Slept on an acre of bones" - Reflects both an intense recognition of and resignation toward the events that he (the speaker) is forced to negotiate. It's a combination of awe and awfulness, a collision of the secular and sacred, that is the focus of this speaker's experience - and there is a sort of helplessness AND hopefullness bound up in his recognition of this.

It's a celebration - of both life and death. I think the rest of the album carries this theme as well. It carried me through hurricane Ivan, and the loss of my home. Something about it is able to embrace the... wholeness... of so many apparently differentiated things. And I think this song is the best point of that whole album.

Time after time, through suffering or loss, I am continuously reminded of our star stuff. How this material we are formed from is on loan from the stars. Never again will this unique combination exist but all will go on forever. Romantic yes, and scientific, precious sentiments when looking in both directions – back towards one’s birth and forwards towards one’s death. In between we meet both continuously.

Sometimes I believe that the reason why we are surprised is that the stuff we are made of, and one could argue that the same is true of our souls, has a beginning or end is because it does not. We know that there is no fundamental beginning or end, only changing states.

So do we seek and find comfort in summaries of a life or do we find comfort in the open endedness of what they have been in our lives.

Today a package came with a shakily handwritten note from my Dad. In it was a baby bonnet made from a handkerchief for my daughter who will be born any day now.. It was made so that by removing a few stitches it could be returned to a handkerchief. This handkerchief could then be used as the “something old” on her wedding day. In a simple gift my father had found his way to my unborn child’s wedding day, which he will not be alive to see..

But these lines are not just connected through material things we collect and pass on. They come more from our energy and time and what we commit to each other. How does our spirit live on in another? By living our lives fully next to one another. To be a gift to another when you have gone, you must be a gift to them while you are here.

Today I feel like something is sinking in. By this time next week I will more than likely be holding the most precious thing I will ever hold. A new congregation of star stuff, new and radiant and crying and crapping her way into this new experience. I will be here to catch her and hold her and clean her. In the coming years I will do my best to be a gift to her as she will no doubt be to me.

Each day and night cycles and because it does and we are bound to time in this congregation of star stuff, we too cycle. When we see the light on the new horizon or when we see it fade at the end of the day countless lives have passed and entered this world, brothers and sisters across the globe – all want to be loved and noticed as sacred.

And in reaching from that center that wants to be loved we feel this connection and meaning between life and death and hold in our smallest hands a promise of what is best in us all. Though the day to day may cover it over from time to time, we ache when we can not see it. We count our finest moments as those when we were a gift to another, when we feel that center reach back to grab the gifts we were given and place them forward in the lives that will move past our own.

I used to believe that enlightenment or salvation were the highest states in a human experience, and I used to place at the center of my spiritual path. The longer I live, the more I believe that it is in the act of giving that we find our highest calling and highest good. It is the most meaningful way to participate in this cycle – it is the only explanation for the coming and going in this cycle that does justice to explaining the passing of a good life or hope for a new one.