Edward Hays ~ Author, Artist & Storyteller
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Out of the Woods

4/26/2012

 

Out of the Woods

“We not out of the woods yet,” is frequently heard these days when the great recession is slowly improving. The saying implies that while modest progress is being made in the economy don’t presume it will continue to improve. Today, no explanation is required of this expression, and it can easily invoke images of Hansel and Gretel and other fairy tale heroes in a dark foreboding forest escaping wickedly evil monsters.

This caution is older than the fairy tales, originally being an old Roman expression. The Roman legions marched north out of Italy into the great dark German and French forests. In those dimly lit, shadowy forests they fought barbarian Huns and Goths tribesman in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Once the barbarians fled defeated, the Roman legionnaires began happily marching out of the dark forests for the safety of their camps. Aware of the Hun’s ingeniously skill at surprise attacks, their officers warned, “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

None of us frets over being attacked today by barbarian Huns, yet none of us are truly home safe. When the traffic light turns green, carefully look left and right before entering the intersection, hearing the echo of that old Roman caution. Be vigilant, for there are an increasing number of drivers who don’t stop for yellow-turning-red or even—sadly—for solid red lights!

Regardless if it is your health, job, personal safety or the economy, none of us is out of the woods yet. Like Roman legionaries of old, be cautious when entering intersections or dipping into your savings for a needless luxury, and practice a forward thinking in life so as to avoid danger and harm.

However, also be cautious about being cautious! Avoid like the plague being fearfully vigilant; practice moderation in being careful. Spice up your life with zesty risks and tangy reckless daring, otherwise continuous caution will pickpocket your life of enjoyment.

In his poem Bravado, Robert Frost spoke of the need of recklessness:

        Have I not walked without an upward look
        of caution under the stars that very well
        might not have missed me when they shot and fell?
        It was a risk I had to take—and took.

Remembering Heaven

4/19/2012

 

Remembering Heaven


Do you remember when you were floating inside your mother’s womb? Do you have a memory of your torturous journey out of her womb through the birth channel into this world? No—but the absence of those memories doesn’t mean you never experienced them. Is it possible you might have such a forgotten memory of Heaven?

While that is an irrational question, let’s tease a possibility out of a beautiful old legend. Once there were two eager parents awaiting the immanent birth of their child. Meanwhile in heaven, from among all the babies scheduled to go to earth, God selects a special child for that eager father and mother. The chosen child is carried to God who lovingly cradles the baby in his great arms and affectionately blesses the child. Then God calls an Archangel to step forward, and with all of heaven’s angels and saints watching, the Archangel bends over the child and firmly presses his thumb in the baby’s upper lip saying,“Forget!” To which God adds, “My dearly beloved child, as you depart for earth all your memories of the awesome beauties and delights of heaven have now been wiped clean. You have forgotten this is from where you have come, that here is where you are destined to return.”

This old and charming legend explains that small curved indentation in our upper lips we acquired from the memory-cleansing Archangel as we departed from heaven. Pause in reading this reflection and touch your finger to that small curled indention in your upper lip. Allow it symbolically to be a reminder from where you have come, and of your divinely designed final destination.

“Nice story!” say smiling realists. “But if heaven exists, is it a place with angels on puffy white clouds playing harps—no ball games, movies or shopping, just a nursing home in the sky where nothing happens but eternal rest?” No, scripture tells us what awaits after death: “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, nor has is it entered the human heart what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Steve Jobs, the genius creator of Apple products, died of cancer in the prime of his life. A friend said of him that Steve could see the future. He loved beautiful things, insisting that the iPhone and iPad be crafted as beautifully as possible. As cancer consumed his body, Steve retreated to his home and family in Palo Alto, California. Feeling his death looming, he called his sister Mona telling her the end was near and to come quickly. She did, and found Steve’s wife Laurene and his four children gathered at his bedside. Mona spoke of how Steve’s breathing became more and more labored, as arduous as if he were struggling to climb a high mountain. Just before Steve Jobs closed his eyes for the last time, he looked up and over those gathered around his bed, and saw something only he could see. And he cried out ecstatically: “Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow.”

Evidence for Nay Sayers

4/9/2012

 

Evidence for Nay Sayers

This past Sunday, as Christians went to church to celebrate Easter’s resurrection of Jesus, they were not showered with laughter and ridicule by their neighbors and friends. However, when the early disciples of Jesus proclaimed that he had risen from the dead they were drenched with jeering ridicule and laughter publicly by both the learned and common person.

The source of that ridicule was expressed by the learned ones of old: “Once a man dies, there is no resurrection,” said Aeschylus. “Those who have died are without hope,” said Theocritus. And the Latin poet Catullus stated, “When once our brief light sets, there is one perpetual night through which we must sleep.” On the lips of Theocritus could be put these words, “Oh yes, in myth the god Dionysus did rise from the dead, but an actual Jewish peasant carpenter?”

Many today would agree with those ancients’ belief that life ends with death! These days right after Easter are excellent for pondering: Is faith in life after death a ridiculous or a realistic belief? Do not dismiss this as a speculative question for white-haired philosophers to squabble over; it is a vitally critical question for anyone who has seriously pondered their own death.

In these days after Easter, rejoice in the Good News, convincing evidence that life after death does exist! You ask, “Where can I look to find such proof?” Look up at the night sky. Look down at your body. The sparkling light of distant stars you see at night comes from now long dead stars, yet in their explosive death they scattered their dust and gasses in the universe as fertile seeds of new stars and planets.

Now look at your body; like all humans it is mostly water. The atoms of hydrogen in your body’s water are 13 billion years old! They and the other chemical elements in your body were created by nuclear fusion of dying stars long before our sun began to shine. Indeed “we are dust and to dust we shall return,” but we are stardust! No planets—no life on this planet or elsewhere—could have existed without the death of stars over the past billions of years. Matter cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Encoded in the history of our ancient ancestors who dwelled in the infinite sea of stars in the Cosmos is the divine secret: Death is the mother of all life!

Awaken to how highly privileged you are, esteemed over all the hundreds of millions who have lived before you. You are privileged to live in an age that seemingly daily accesses greater and greater knowledge of the universe that far exceeds what was previously known by the most learned of scholars. So rejoice, be drunk with gratitude that in the cosmic passion story of dying stars giving birth to new stars can be found the splendorous Easter Mystery that out of death arises new life.

Attempted, but Aborted Escapes

4/4/2012

 

Attempted , but Aborted Escapes

In the March 23rd post reflection, Marcus Aurelius encouraged escaping from it all. Current society is taking his advice seriously about fleeing from something we truly dread--death! Until recently, the word “died” was respectable in our vocabulary. Now, however, in public announcements of the death of a famous person or when speaking of a neighbor or family member who has died, we dodge the impolite “died” and say they’ve “passed.”

This escape euphemism is perhaps shortened from “passed on” or “passed away.” Other escape words are “crossed over,” “has gone home,” or even, “disappeared.” But this last one is even more disturbing than “died”! Typically, euphemisms such as “restroom” are used because the proper word is socially unacceptable. A spiritual euphemism in part of Africa that implies a destination beyond the grave is the beautiful expression, “She arrived!”

Dying has always been greatly feared, a frightening fate to escape from regardless the cost. Yet this natural end of all life is the most significant final act in each of the dramas of our lives. Like good actors and actresses we should prepare and practice for our greatest scene. Denial of your own or others deaths, along with using easy euphemisms, prevents embracing this ultimate inescapable reality.

The full moon of the spring equinox is on April 5th, Good Friday, when Christians commemorate the death of Jesus on the cross. With our fondness for euphemisms for death, will we say that Jesus “passed”? Good Friday should shout to us that death is not a four-letter word! To die is natural and therefore holy, not obscene or why call “good” the Friday of Jesus’ death?

Contrary to the Garden of Eden legend, death isn’t part of the cursed punishment inherited from Adam and Eve, anymore than are the natural pains of childbirth. Death is a gift of God. Death is the great cure for much suffering and pain. While death can and does separate us from those we love, it isn’t an evil. So allow this Good Friday reflection to assist you in thoughtfully reflecting on your own death and that of others as naturally good and holy.

A Greek legend tells of a young man who, in the vigorous prime of life, watched people die and fervently begged of the gods the gift that he would never die. The gods granted his wish, and so he lived on as one by one his friends and family all died. He also continued year after year to grow older, more infirm and crippled with the afflictions of the aged. As sickness ate away at him he cursed the day that the gods gifted him with freedom from death. Finally, as a lonely, blind, deaf, sickly and infirm old man of 150 years the gods—so goes the legend—took pity on him and let him die.


    Edward Hays


    Picture
    Haysian haphazard thoughts on the
    invisible and visible mysteries of life.

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