Last Saturday I rode my motorcycle alone to the Atlantic and saw a play. It was a cold and reflective trip, which I am famous for. I am not famous far and wide, but certainly on a smaller scale. I am my own imaginary best friend. Is that a tombstone quote? The trip was grey and wintry. The play was in a tiny community theatre—a play called, THE CEMETERY CLUB. I ate a Big Mac for dinner. It was about life, death, left behind, what we leave that is good, bad, wrong, right and inevitable. The acting was somewhat amateur but nice for community theatre. Got me thinking.
An hour after returning from that trip, frozen a little stiff, I was told my Aunt Laura Mae, in Arkansas had died that morning. This was a shock, as she was currently taking care of dear Uncle Stanley, he almost 101 years old—so it was presumed he would go first and she would live forever. I was very close to them both. Stanley is my hero and she is the wind beneath his wings, by all accounts. I felt punched in the stomach. Death is very final, to coin a phrase.
A frenzied drive to Pine Bluff to the viewing, where she lay in a coffin that night—and I thought to myself that she had been alive and talking just over 24 hours before. I wondered about blood clots and rapid burial and blood thinner and malpractice and an autopsy skipped, but I am a lawyer and we are paid to wonder about such things. That's why people want to kill us all. We tend to ask too many questions. Now she was cold and hard and her spirit gone, wherever they go. Stanley, mercifully, understood she was dead, and then his mind shut it off and he went on to something else, deep inside his new world.
I have become closer to my father—and my mother too, in the time since their passing and I wonder if this will be the case with Laura Mae. I also recall, sheepishly, that I skipped going by to visit them, in Arkansas when I made my cross-country motorcycle trip in August. I made up some good reasons, but cannot remember them. In truth, I was uncomfortable watching Stanley not be all-there. This disturbed me because I knew that, one day, I would step into that dimension too—and I didn't want a preview. It is much better to pretend it will not happen.
Soon, after coming back from Pine Bluff, in an equally frenzied drive, deprived of sleep and behind in life as we get (there is really no time for such things as funerals—can't we computerize them?), I reflected upon Jemima Puddle Duck and the Christian Bible. I reflected on the fact that I met Laura Mae when I returned from Vietnam, and she was 46. Nowadays, 46 is youngish. Then she was middle aged. How is that? I am ten years senior to her age at that moment and I absently plotted her and me on the timeline of life and thought about the play. Hmmmm. My my.
Quickly, I made some assessments as I thought about the other assessments that are made at a funeral. As did many of those present at Laura Mae's funeral, I imagined my own somber passing celebration. We are all so self absorbed. Her lying in her coffin scares the crap out of us, as we think about our eventual arrival there. What will they say about me, thinks everyone, while the preacher drones on about a place called heaven and Laura's oyster colored Cadillac and how she drove people around in it and bought them lunch and things. About how she was a faithful and long term member of the Baptist Church. I never saw her going to any church. Maybe she did. I think she was a wonderful person, but it had nothing to do with her lunch-buying or church, certainly. But I admired the lady she was and the place she came from to get there and her character and strength. I liked her Cadillac, but I don't care much about cars I guess.
In doing some reading today, I see now that Christianity is the truth. It is the truth and so is the story of Jemima Puddle Duck and the Koran and the Tao and all of it. Because the truth is a grouping of core components—present in all these things, and so it really doesn't matter what you believe or profess, in particular. It is important that you recognize and accept the core truths and principles, as you see and experience and perceive them, and that you live them. If you do that (which I do not) your passing is peaceful, happy and fulfilling. If you step outside those white lines, you bring misery upon yourself and those around you and those you leave behind. Those in your cemetery club.
But it doesn't matter where, from what publication, you obtain these core principles. Indeed, they do not come from publications. Only that you see and know them, that they resonate with your spirit and that you follow them honestly. This is where happiness multiplies—unlike the happiness of addiction or wrongdoing, which requires higher doses to maintain the happiness.
Jemima Puddle Duck can teach it all to you. Greed, care in relationships, bravery, honesty, wariness, acceptance, skill distribution, adventure, danger, -- all of it is there. Want a little more structured look? The Christian Bible can teach these things too. Is it important if the story about Jemima and the fox and the hounds and the eggs is true—I mean that it truly actually happened? Or, is it important that it demonstrates the point? Shall I kill you if you refuse to believe that foxes wear coats with tails to hide their own tails, so ducks don't notice they are foxes? Shall I call you names and burn your cities? If you prefer Mohammed, then these things can be learned in the Koran. If you prefer Buddha, his take is well documented and his Chinese and Indian brethren all have their own stuff too. But it is the same stuff. Same core stuff.
We all know, inherently, what it is too. The atheists tell us that we will obey these precepts generally, because it is in our best interest to do so, and that there is some tribal or sociological purpose served. This means, I think, that without constraints, we would not be fair or honest. Why did the collie find and discern what was going on with the fox and Jemima? Why did the hounds search out and kill the fox? Were they atheists or believers?
So—in that sense, the Bible IS the word of God. Whatever God is whatever something is that is everything and is everywhere and always has and will be and is part of everything. Such a being is in the Bible and Jemima and the Koran and the Tao and everywhere. The core is built into us, as we are part of the one thing that is all things. We are God and God is us, in that sense. But the Bible is also a document cobbled together by Constantine, leaving out what they didn't like, and so maybe Jemimia Puddle Duck has some stuff we need to know too. I don't know. Just a suggestion.
But I am still a little worried about my funeral.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment