Between by Lucky

Deepening the Wonder

Death is a favor to us,

but our scales have lost their balance.

The impermanence of the body

Should give us great clarity,

Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

Of this mysterious existence we share

And are surely just traveling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,

Hafiz would call for drinks

And as the Master poured, I would be reminded

That all I know of life and of myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine

Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight

I would buy freely for everyone in this world

Because our marriage with the cruel beauty

Of time and space cannot endure very long.

Death is a favor to us,

but our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of

            Form

Always makes the illumined ones

            Laugh and sing.

                                    --Hafiz

Between Birth and Death lie the provinces of Life. But what if, between Death and Birth, there lay other provinces of Life? What if, Life incorporated it all? Then Death might in fact be a favor to us. As the poet Wendell Berry says Death might bring a “solving justice.”

Death, in our culture is not considered an ally. It just seems to rob us of a chance to go on doing what we are doing (sometimes, rather messily). But, Death actually puts people out of their misery. I don’t mean we are all miserable. But, rather, that there seems to be something about these provinces of Life, that are hard, stressful, full of tension and uncertainty. All of it makes being human hard and humbling. The lack of a Death that serves any useful, good purpose leaves too many of us dreading it. And, to too many, it is a sign of failure, or of something being wrong.

But, what if, instead, something is right? Death may be, like the mystic poem suggests, a favor to us. No one knows for sure, but it certainly is telling, that we have come around to convincing our selves how bad and scary this mystery is. Death seems to be a reflection of our rather skewed imagination. Perhaps, it is a phenomenon that does what we cannot — that is, stop. Life is so frenetic. Death is the final resting place.

I’m tired too. Getting older seems to take a lot of energy. But, Death doesn’t seem so frightening anymore, actually, I kind of look forward to it. I’m not exactly eager for it, but I am re-assured that it is inevitable. I like the idea of “solving justice,” and peace, and I don’t see any other path that seems to lead in that direction. As I grey and wither, I wonder about many things, and I find myself returning to the compassionate nature of Life, that in every case, it includes an inevitable death.

A friend of mine recently said, “Death enables evolution to happen.” We were conjecturing upon the possibility that existence, in the human sense, might be the only place where learning and evolution takes place. What if, we speculated, Death actually is pretty easy, and that the difficulty of Life is the only place where souls can advance, learn, and serve as evolutionary agents? Then living, especially a life that required some creativity, would be such a privilege, a challenging opportunity. Maybe the time in between is so easy and effortless that it doesn’t serve the growth of consciousness, the expansion of the Universe and Creation.

I think that Death in the words of George Bush, has been “misunderestimated.” To me, it seems very likely that Death is a gift to us. A spiritual passageway where the ego dies and the actual seed of our personal uniqueness passes on, into another, larger ecology. I suspect that the drama of Life there, in that existence, will be even more compelling, than the one which prepared us. Life goes on. And what lives in the cracks, between Death and Birth? That is the real question.

I believe, between Death and Birth lay other provinces of Life.