BIRTH AND REBIRTH
A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford

13 January 2002

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The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end will be. And Jesus said: Have you then discovered your beginning so that now you inquirer about your end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. And blessed is that person who shall stand at the beginning, for that one shall know the end and shall not taste death. Jesus said: Blessed is the one who was before she or he came into being.

The Gospel According to Thomas

I find myself thinking about Charlie. And I want to talk about it. Last week, I spoke of those intimations we have, of moments in which the world may be revealed: our epiphanies. Within the experience of epiphany we come to notice what has always been right in front of us. But we see it with new eyes. And sometimes, when we are just a little lucky, these experiences lead us to ever-deeper awareness of our fundamental connections. In fact, this process is, I believe, the essence of the spiritual path.

Over the years I’ve experienced in small and larger ways that sense of our connections. Certainly, as I think of Charlie and of other loved ones who have now died, I’m deeply moved at how I find those connections continuing. And I wonder about what that means. In the face of this awesome reality that is our life and our death questions rise. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going?

Today I want to continue to reflect on the mystery of life and death, and how we might engage it, what those questions might reveal. Today, particularly I want to lift the veil on death itself. If we seek wisdom, if we really want wisdom, we need to look closely at this event and what it might mean.

In this context, I remember an old Gary Larson Far Side cartoon. It’s a cave scene where two figures are in bed. One, the cave husband, is sitting bolt upright and staring straight ahead. The other, the cave wife, is looking up at him and saying, "Og, you only dream that you live so long then die. Go back to sleep."

Possibly the second most ancient mystery known to humanity is death. As we differentiated out from the other apes, what was distinctive about us, what seems to have made us something new and different was the quality of our self-awareness. Certainly other creatures, particularly our cousins the higher apes are self-aware. But we knew we were here in a sense that does not seem to be shared with other creatures on this planet. Our self-consciousness is all-possessing. We sing songs, write poems and weave religions out of this awareness of our being.

And, like a two-edged sword, cutting both ways; quickly after we knew we were here, we also knew we would not always be here. Someone would die, one moment alive, the next dead. And if that didn’t make it clear, then another person would die. At some point, no matter how much one might want it otherwise, it would be obvious to the self aware, to our ancestors, that each of us, each blessed one of us would, indeed, die. It is here, in this knowledge, that our religions become focused.

Now while there is a part of our consciousness that would rather go back to sleep, go back to oblivious existence; that just isn’t part of the deal. We all must live with the harsh reality that there is a limit to our existence, that we are finite, that we have beginnings and ends. Now, as we human beings have confronted this reality and have reflected upon it, and have tried to make sense out of it, we have come up with a number of ideas.

One idea, and a popular one, is that we don’t really die. We look at different kinds of life, and we see the possibilities of rebirth in many deaths, particularly in plants where something may flourish, apparently die in the winter, and then in the spring be reborn. Faith in a seed, as Henry Thoreau once observed: faith in a seed. Within a contemplation of the vegetive world a reasonable person can make all sorts of analogies and metaphors for the possibilities.

Rebirth, reincarnation, heaven and, of course, hell, all spin out of this intimation of something more, that the grave does not hold us or our precious individuality. Many religions are based in this insight or hope, from the resurrection story of Osiris whose scattered parts are gathered and put back together again by his lover Isis, to the twins Hunter and Jaguar in the Mayan epic Popul Vuh, who are also torn apart only to be reconstructed, to the resurrection of Jesus’ friend Lazarus, and from there, of course, on to the high story of Jesus killed and buried, but who leaps from the grave, to live again.

Commenting on this thought, and expanding upon it, a Unitarian Universalist minister known to several in this congregation, G. Peter Fleck writes: "There exists… an analogy between the Jewish commemoration of the exodus, the deliverance from the yoke of Egypt and the Christian commemoration of the resurrection, the deliverance from the sting of death. (And he adds, if you go back far enough, it is obvious how) Both were originally spring festivals."

He goes on. "All three celebrations have in common the quality of renewal. The fertility cults of the ancients abound with resurrected gods or demigods symbolizing this renewal as an awakening from death." Observing the great cycles of the planet and our biological existence, he comments on how "spring is a yearly recurring event, a biological event that is predictable and holds no (or, at least, only the rarest of) surprises. Thus, there is renewal but it is a renewal without change.

Of course, as we look at ourselves, change is obvious; change is inevitable. And really, change is necessary. Certainly change is necessary if we hope to grow beyond what we are at this moment. And this is the challenge, and the spiritual possibility. We need to chance death if we hope to see what more we might be. Here the mystery emerges. We seem to need death in some very real sense.

So, Peter continues. "The Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter are festivals of renewal as change. They celebrate events that have a unique as against a repetitious character, a spiritual as against a biological character. They celebrate changes in the human situation brought about by men (and women) who assumed seemingly superhuman tasks, after having wrestled with and overcome agonizing doubts about their ability to fulfill these tasks."

In his wonderful book, The Mask of Religion, Fleck unravels this beautifully. He draws our attention to how Passover celebrates our courage to strive for freedom and to live by taking those actions in our own hands, which will save our lives. Easter celebrates our human courage that may take us to willingly give up our freedom and to find life in the mystery of giving up our lives. Here in these stories of our ancestors, we find all the contradictions and conundrums of human life and human freedom.

There is grace in this world, and it is the possibility of change. Grace and beauty are all around us. And here facing those realities, how can I do anything but marvel and tremble with the power of it all. I notice and I am awe struck. And in such moments of raw noticing, I find something of the truth in the intuition that has led so many of us to embrace the seventh principle of our contemporary Unitarian Universalist statement of principles and purposes.

That is our assertion of how we are all wrapped within an interdependent web of existence. Here is where I find the meaning that is hinted at in the ancient stories of death and resurrection, and in festivals of Passover and Easter. And so much more. Here what was and what is and what might be weave together. At this realization our hopes and aspirations, our dreams sing to us.

Here Rossetti’s Sudden Light echoes all those thoughts, intimations of a something more in our lives. "I have been here before,/But when or how I cannot tell./I know the grass beyond the door,/The sweet keen smell,/The sighing sound, the lights around the/shore.

"You have been mine before,--/How long ago I may not know;/But just when at that swallow’s soar/Your neck turned so,/Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

"Has it been thus before?/And shall not thus time’s eddying flight/Still with our lives our loves restore/In death’s despite,/And day and night yield one delight once/more?"

What is this intimation in truth, but our body knowing how profoundly and deeply we are all connected. Here the stories collapse, and reality is revealed. I was asked the other day if I could speak of an authentic spirituality with one word. In the moments that passed after that question, I found images flashing before me. I thought of my family. I felt the presence of my teachers and guides. I thought of my friends, particularly I found Charlie’s face watching with his great smile. I thought of the terrible mystery that is change.

And I said, "Intimacy." Our hints of rebirth and our grabbing at metaphors from nature for our spiritual lives are at core, at best, I am certain, really about our intimations of intimacy. At some deep level of our consciousness that ability of self-awareness; we know we are a part of it all. And, in fact, clinging to some aspect of this wondrous play of existence as more precious than the rest is missing the point. That part, as it presents itself, whether Charlie or a flower or you or me, is a door. And we need to open it.

So, I think of Charlie. Charlie, in his just being who he was, and as he grew older and wiser, in really enjoying that who he was, as he was both the good and the ill of it, shows us much of what this might mean. Here is something powerful. In noticing the finite, a passing human life, I noticed something of the eternal. Here is something true. In just paying attention to Charlie as he was I found he showed me much of what this call to attention might mean. He spoke freely of his death. But it was obvious his feelings were not focused on what follows, but what is. And here is the secret of our knowing.

As we attend to the present moment, as we look around ourselves, as we take the hand of another in our own, or simply fold our hands in our lap with some awareness; at that moment we find our birth, our death and our resurrection.

As we care, as we notice, as we hold with open hands, open hands for surely everything that is passes; as we hold with open hands we discover the secret. At that moment of paying attention, of recalling our loved one, of noticing what is right before us, in allowing the whole mysterious play of it all, we see. And we have opened the door. And we have walked through. At that moment we become intimate.

Each of us, you and I, without a shade of a doubt, we are precious, unique, and tied up so closely each of us to the other, that eternal life is obviously part of the deal. Charlie has died. But, I continue to think of Charlie. He continues in many very real ways within each of us: right now within our consciousness.

We can remember him, his face, his music. He has shaped each of us in some way. Change. Being present to Charlie has allowed me to change. Charlie has entered my heart and made me new. Now time will pass. And so will we all. But, our actions, and it seems even our intentions continue to play, continue to live. We should remember that. There is an ethical quality to all this. What we intend and what we do plays out in other lives. Now in Charlie’s case the good certainly outweighs the ill, a gift to us all. And without a doubt his life will play on, a thread, a line of melody, enriching the world.

And so it will be for all of us. We live on for good and for ill. Our lives play out, and within the web of intimacy who we are will continue in the strands of connection. As we notice this, here birth and death fall away. Here we can directly understand what William Blake was singing to us in that opening stanza of his Auguries of Innocence. "To see the world in a grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour."

I think of that hand, I think of that hour, and I think of Charlie. And I experience another epiphany. Here in our mute acceptance of the power and reality of it all, of who and what each of us is; we discover the truth shaded by those words, birth, death, rebirth, resurrection. Here, at this precious moment of noticing what has always been right in front of our noses, we come to know our beginning as our end: one thing. And what a truth is revealed, as we come to understand this. Change. Mystery. Awe. Intimacy.

Amen.