I considered not writing this, because of the sensitivity involved. I don’t mean sensitivity as in taboo or scandalous. The sensitivity here is around the intimacy of circumstances, and my respect for them.
Then I realized I needed to write it, for my own sake, to clarify my thoughts, and to be present to the experience as it unfolds.
Then the question arose of whether or not to post it, also because of the sensitivity.
But that sensitivity, my beloved friends, is actually the reason why I’m publishing it.
Because so much published writing either doesn’t deal with the sensitivities of life, or deals with sensitivities in an insensitive or incomplete way.
We don’t merely have to speak about all of reality, but we need to learn how to speak of it in good measure.
Right now, there’s an overwhelming amount of talk about “politics”, which most expansively means the way in which power is manifested and organized among human beings, but by which most of us seem to mean “what people elected by a minority of the population say on television”, and by which lots of people mean “who should be the President of the United States”, even if lots of those people have never been to the United States.
There are clearly far more thoughtful ways to talk about “politics”; and there are often many things that matter more than “politics”; and today I’m witnessing one of them.
Sheila is asleep a few feet from me. Sheila is my mother-in-law. Brian, my spouse is sitting nearby. The immediate family are never more than minutes away, rotating in and out as we hold vigil for Sheila in hospice, where she has been for the last week. Brian’s dad, with Sheila for over sixty years now, has slept in the room with her every night. Sheila will likely leave us, in this form at least, in the next few days. For now, she is comfortable, resting, receiving extraordinary care from medical staff who treat her in the best Southern style as a respected elder; which means at times they also interact with her as a sister, a daughter, a friend. And they treat the rest of the family as folks for whom they are also responsible to care. Brian and I are staying next door to the hospice, in an amazing facility offered to folks who are caring for others, or for those getting treatment themselves. It was founded by “community leaders, dedicated volunteers, and generous funders” — chief among them the foundation arm of a local credit union (of course - such a place is a literal embodiment of social democracy), it costs $40 a night for a comfortable and spacious room, or less if you can’t afford that; the food is free, provided by the local community; and its staff are also exemplary - the cleaners, the admin folks, the receptionist, all talking to us like we’re human beings.
The other guests at the facility smile and say hello in ways you never see in a hotel. We all know that everyone we see staying at this place is dealing with some challenging or painful burden. And we act like we know it. We make space for each other, offer to help, nod and smile, even when the person we’re smiling at is wearing an offensive t-shirt, or looks like someone who might otherwise inspire anxiety.
We go the extra mile, which really should be the first mile, the goes-without-saying mile, the mile that any sane person would walk before they even think of complaining. The mile of simple human kindness.
Sitting here with my mother-in-law asleep, breathing gently, slowly, and my beloved spouse also sleeping; Sheila in a medical bed with a blanket whose design has delightful blue-green butterflies (made for her by a group of local church ladies who would probably be quite happy to be called church ladies), Brian on a green couch, I’m thinking of the family I joined in marrying Brian, and how family is indeed the basis of society.
But Sheila’s life teaches that it is a mistake to contend that “family” is only constituted by blood or adoption. Sheila has always thought about family in the most all-embracing sense. But for many, as with “politics”, our narrow definition of terms has withheld something profound from us. “Family” is what happens when two or more people decide to interweave the circumstances of their lives along with the pre-existing, immutable, and not-optable-out-of web of existence that should by rights lead us all to experience every encounter with each stranger as an invitation to simple awe.
Here’s some of the awe I know about Sheila.
Once, when Brian was having a hard time accessing warm words for me when I was feeling under the weather, Brian insisted that he’d grown up in a home where the response to not feeling well was Suck it up. When Brian called Sheila seeking back up, her response was to tell Brian to Suck it up and be gentle, the perfect admonition for an enneagram 8; whose kindness is more typically expressed in actions than words.
Sheila, mother to a myriad, helped raise Brian in a spiritual community where he learned despite many reasons to believe the contrary lie, that You are a beloved child of God, and no one can take that from you, no matter what.
Sheila also once told a much younger Brian when he was going to a church sleepover with a conservative evangelical friend You don’t need to be saved from anything. You’re fine just as you are.
Last week, when Sheila was making decisions with her family’s support about entering hospice care, she said two things that will stay with me, I hope forever.
I don’t feel like I’m dying.
And
I’ve had a lucky life.
Few of us feel like we’re dying, but all of us are.
Many of us may not feel that we’ve had lucky lives, but you could tell Sheila’s story in a way that doesn’t lead with luck, or that describes the many inordinately difficult things she has undergone as if her life has been only a struggle, and she only wounded. No small part of her “lucky” life is a result of the choices she’s made in response to struggle; much of her life is lucky because she built it that way.
One thing that can help change an unlucky life into a lucky one is to start living in the light of knowing that one day we will have no control over what anyone does to our body, thinks of our reputation, or says in our name. We may have limited control even now, but what we can do is to live as if the “gift” of life were worth its name. As if life’s semantic echo - love - were more important than anything else we could devote ourselves to.
As I’m sitting here looking at Sheila, she’s making me pay attention.
I’m listening.
In the rise and fall of her breath, here’s what I think I’m hearing.
Neither “politics” nor “religion” nor “culture” nor “nation” nor money nor power matter more than the act of giving yourself for the sake of another. No ideology is worth more than giving a glass of cold water to a thirsty stranger. No amassed physical property is worth more than the treasure of relationship with loved ones. No belonging is deeper than the conscious belonging to, stewardship of, and blessing from the whole ecosystem.
No people are worth more or less than any other.
Sheila is one of those people whom, despite her strong political opinions, I never heard speak an ill word of anyone. In fact, what I’m calling her strong political opinions are also the foundational knowledge shared by all spiritual and wisdom traditions.
And it is knowledge, not just an article of faith:
There is no higher ideal or more meaningful - or, frankly, more efficient - way to live than simply to devote yourself to love, which will be best understood in the light of facing the meaning of death.
What a spiritual director friend of Brian’s calls the life-giving properties of death awareness start with how a contemplative understanding of death can permeate our senses with the gravity of life. It can calibrate our perception, making the lenses through which we see life not so much rose-colored as accurate.
Sheila would probably find those words to be grandiose - she would probably just say you love because you love. But part of the point of language is not just to make ourselves understood, but to reanimate ourselves by saying the same thing in different ways. So as I’m sitting here in this moment with two people who love each other as deeply as Sheila and Brian, my own language is coming to life.
You may have different ways of saying this, and that’s wonderful.
The way I want to say it is like this:
If you knew the meaning of life, then why would you waste a single second on anything else?
And if the meaning of life is that humans are here to learn how to love and be loved, why would you put anything else in front of that?
And if learning how to love and be loved includes the astonishing liberation of knowing that you matter deeply, and nobody is any more special than anybody else, then why wouldn’t you do everything you could to experience and share that liberation?
I know also that there will be folks reading this who are experiencing some of the hardest days of their lives. My heart goes out to you. Truly we can unite our suffering with each other to some degree, asking for support from those who are able, and offering light from our own ration, to anyone who needs it.
That offering is the deeper reason why I risk writing and publishing these thoughts, composed in a room where the only sounds are Sheila’s sleeping breaths, the air conditioner, and my keystrokes.
I want to call myself - and the rest of us - to something better than what we usually settle for.
I want us to act like we know that everyone we meet is undergoing life as well as experiencing it. That it’s likely in any given day that we will encounter people who don’t think they will make it to the end of that day, or who have reason to want to not wake up tomorrow.
More often than those more dramatic, though not hugely exceptional, circumstances, we will likely cross paths before our next meal with people whose lives are indeed quietly desperate, anxious about money or career or relationships, lost in painful memories or concern for the future, tired of the commute, undervalued by their own minds.
And most of all we will meet - and be mirrored by - people whose lenses have not been calibrated into seeing the mountains and rivers as our home, the sky as our roof, our very breath as a miracle, and the invitation to be alive and in relationship with other people and the wider ecosystem as something that nobody can take away from us, no matter what.
Unless we withhold it from ourselves.
So don’t withhold it from yourself.
Instead, and I write this so that I can remember it myself…
Offer extravagant shelter to your own soul, by committing to always being your own best friend, or at least experimenting with the idea that there truly is no truth more foundational than that happiness is found through prioritizing love over everything else.
Reflect on your impact (conscious and unconscious) on others.
Where it has hurt them, ask for forgiveness.
Where it has been life-giving, do more of the same.
Get initiated into a wisdom tradition whose fruits are agreed by people wiser than you to be good; or initiate yourself until someone comes along who can take you further. (The best way to do this is to try to tell the truth, all the time, starting with telling it to yourself.)
Tell also the people you know that you love them, and that they matter.
Ask for what you need before the need overcomes your ability to ask.
Don’t hoard anything but friendship, so that you can share it without becoming lonely.
Tend carefully what you “own”, and share it widely.
Don’t let resentment overwhelm your boundaries, and forgive quickly, or at least don’t take revenge.
See that at the core of every human being is something that can be a mirror for you.
Discern how much “politics” and “the news” is worthy of your time, the least renewable resource you hold. We must take real care with this, because what many people call “the bigger picture” has the potential to dehumanize us all. “Politics” and “the news” deserve our attention precisely to the degree that they treat us with respect; participation in the process of transforming “politics” and “the news” can be sacred, to the degree that we treat ourselves with respect.
In encountering strangers, act like a hospice nurse. For we are all, always, in rooms with dying people. We should treat them - and ourselves - with appropriate honor.
Become the kind of person who leaves others feeling that they are beloved, and that no one can take that away from them, no matter what.
Live as if you know you’re going to die.
Which means to figure out the meaning of love.
Which depends, partly, on taking death seriously enough to take life seriously enough.
I considered not writing this because of the sensitivity involved. But there are some sensitive things from which we must not hide; they are some of the most universal things, yet rarely talked about with discernment; some of the simplest things, yet made more complicated by how we put other, less significant or meaningful things in front of them.
Of course these days we’re sharing with Sheila, these days that Sheila is inviting us into, these days in which love is unquestionably the only foundation worth building on, these days are special, different, not ordinary.
But imagine what might happen if we allowed such days to illuminate the ordinary ones?