Monday Morning Musing: Of Birth and Death and Birth

One of the hardest things about leaving a congregation I've loved is hearing news of deaths. So many amazing, fierce, strong, funny, faithful people have died in the time since I've been gone. Most of them were women. They were the heartbeat of that place.

This week's death was of a woman I met when she was 82. She was a hiker and skier and had joined the Peace Corps at a rather advanced age, following the death of her husband. Her family finally "borrowed" all of the ladders from her house so she would stop climbing up on the roof to clean the gutters. She marched with us in the Pride Parade in sweltering heat at age 86, waving her flag and telling us to KEEP UP! No parade would pass her by. Her husband was also a pastor and she knew the rigors of this vocation. Every Holy Week and every Christmas Week she would stop by the church, bringing a loaf of warm cardamom bread and a word of encouragement. Not a mushy word, but the kind of word that made me believe I could get through multiple liturgies and family expectations and other commitments fueled by love and coffee and a delicious treat.

This coming week we will celebrate the birth of my first born. Without going into a long story, he almost did not survive in the moments following his birth and spent his first week in the NICU. He is a miracle. The night of his birth is a blur, really, but I do remember that my pastor and his wife took turns sitting in my room. All night. Gregory's father was keeping vigil in the nursery and, so I would not be alone, Bill and Jeri simply sat in the hospital room chair, praying and offering a word of comfort when needed. By their mere presence I believed that God was with me and that, to quote Julian of Norwich, all would be well, regardless. And it was. And it is.

Holding birth and death seems like holding opposites, but it's not...not really. Both are a threshold, a doorway, to something new and wondrous that, while we are hovering there, is entirely unfamiliar.

This poem, Death and Birth, speaks to this duality well:

Death leads to birth rather than birth, to death. Birth is close to death and not vice versa. Every birth is at the result of a death. Death to birth, not birth to death, is the path. The death of clay is the birth of a pot; The death of the pot is the birth of clay. Ice melts to water and water forms ice. In each conversion, occur death and birth. The death of a night is the birth of a day; The death of a day is the birth of a night. New Year means the death of the old year too. In each transition, takes place death and birth. The death of a seed is the birth of a plant; The death of gametes is the birth of an embryo. Salts die to form cells; cells die to form salts. In each growth, form death and birth of matter. The so called death and birth is nothing but Deaths and births of forms made of matter. The matter itself does not die to be born But is converted to different forms. Elements disappear to form plants. Plants as food add to the animals’ flesh. Plants and animals on death liberate As elements, serving through worms and germs. When a child is born, there’s no birth of life. The embryo transforms into a child. When a man dies, there is no death of life. The body disintegrates to salts. Matter, energy and life have no death They have got one birth since when they’ve been. They interact and come different stages In which the pattern is death and birth.

Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar