Death is a universal human experience. We all have to live in the light of mortality. Everything now living will one day die, and as the wisdom of ages tells us, everything has its time. And no matter how death visits you, it’s visitation is sure and certain. What is less certain is it’s ultimate meaning, which stretches way beyond the obvious cessation of life. Where the mystery leads, x = the unknown.
My own history with death straddles the line between a Southern Baptist upbringing hell bent on making it to heaven ( and other misadventures in missing the point) and my career as a social worker, transforming the energy of death and grief. And what I have learned through those lenses is that death is more than what it often seems to be, but it is certainly not less than that. That is to say that while death presents a foreboding darkness and a closing, sometimes ugly and accompanied by destruction, death can also be an opening into further possibility, and mystery. As an end, it can present the change needed to precipitate transformation, a release from suffering, a gift, depending on how it arrives but more importantly, how we work with it and perceive it. But then who knows what lies in wait? We are all searching for something; “X” marks the spot.
