The Sky Before Electricity In our light-filled world, with electric lamps illuminating our streets, backyards, and skies, few of us ever see the magnificence of a star-filled heaven. Indeed, as Paul Bogard explains in his book, The End of Night, only a few, very isolated places on Earth allow a vision of the night sky like the one our ancestors would have enjoyed, and then only after many hours of waiting for our eyes to adjust. Now that it is fall, I’m out for my walk before the sun rises, yet everywhere I go my path is lit by artificial light. Even when I turn onto the wooded path behind…
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To Walk In Beauty
Beauty Is An Ecstasy According to the poet, Kahlil Gibran, there are many different ways to understand this thing we call Beauty. For instance, the wounded speak of Beauty as kind and gentle. She glides past us “[l]ike a mother half-shy of her own glory.” [1] The “passionate,” on the other hand, claim her as a tempest, loud and powerful and dreadful, like a terrifying sense of wonder. To the “tired and weary,” she speaks to their spirit “like a faint light,” while to the “restless” she shouts as loud as stampeding hoof beats and roaring lions. The “watchmen” see Beauty in the sunrise, and “wayfarers” see her in the…
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Our Plans and God’s Laughter
The Ultimate Joke As others before me have said, death is the ultimate joke. [1] At birth, and for years afterward, we imagine we have eternity to walk, sing, and build towers of metal or of ideas. We scurry through our lives, hoping to make a difference to at least one person, to touch and be touched. We have dreams, and some of us manage to fulfill them. Yet even fulfilled dreams are not the end. Indeed, death’s absurdity may be hardest for those who complete what they set out to accomplish, for when they reach their destination, there’s nothing left. To keep going, one must find a new goal.…
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In Death Is Life
Facing Our Deaths As a chaplain, I spend a lot of time around death. I talk about death with patients and colleagues. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that dying isn’t a normal topic of discussion for most people. At least people in this country. In many cultures, death is still a common part of life. You see that in the Buddhist story of the mustard seed medicine. In the Buddha’s town lived a young mother named Kisa whose only child died from a fever. No one could comfort her. She carried her son’s dead body around with her as if by doing so she could make him live again. She…
