In the Face of Death

I am so tired of the superficiality and one dimension of grief over death. What I’ve lost. What happens to me? What about me?

And in death, this most sacred moment of transition, that we can hold onto the very ideas, beliefs and traditions that caused us so much pain and disease in our bodies in the first place. Why?

What is wrong with us that we can’t see that our ideas literally kill us?

Why can’t you see that by wrapping yourself in the flag of ‘ME’ and my ideals is so futile, so painful, so human. There is no lesson learnt. It hard pride until the bitter end. Tasting the bile in your mouth and still, you raise the hand in a fist and still you curse your children into following in your footsteps?

How does this happen?

My heart bursts to see it. I struggle to find the peace of ‘all’ in this moment. I don’t see hope. I see the treading of little footprints into the adult ones. I see repetition and fear and suffocation and more disease. Following human ideas instead of seeing reality – the divine reality that is right here, right now and it doesn’t ask this hate from you, it doesn’t ask you to remember every grievance or injustice.

Dear God, forgive us! Hang our heads in shame for this continuing abuse of the gift of life you give us. I’m so sorry. It pains me to see. I feel it like a tearing inside.

I am Spanish. I am Catalan. I am Moroccan. I am Muslim. I am American. I am - I am – I am I am – how can these words turn into nails of doom, bitterness, unrelenting eye for an eye mentality?

So then – I’ve written my incomprehension – and I feel slightly better.

Dear God, dearest One, help me to see the glory of You within each of us. Let me see it in the frown, in the scowl, in the hatred, in the fist, in the browning leaf. In the death, in the life, in the living. In what is. Amen