Thoughts Happen

I Can Count All My Bones

I can count all my bones. The line jumped at me from the back of the church during the reading of Psalm 22 during a Holy Week service. It pricked my skin and rattled around me. What an amazing thing to say.

 I can count all my bones. I am human, and I can see that I am human. I can count all my bones.

It’s the kind of thing you say when you’ve tried every way you can possibly think of to get out of yourself and ultimately accepted that it’s ineffectual and pointless, and besides, it’s too much damn work.

I can count all my bones when I’ve become transparent. When I’ve given up thinking I’m anything but an improbably arranged collective of sinew, ligaments and squishy innards bandaged together in a wrapping of stretchy skin, when I’ve abandoned all the fancy adornments of opinion and ideas about who I might be, then I can start counting.

Then I see, as if in a n X-ray, the ghastly ever-smiling framework underneath that sometimes peers out from behind the mirror. When it becomes familiar enough, I’m not afraid to start counting.

I can count all my bones when I accept that there is nothing else solid—what I think of as me is just gelatinous form loosely pressed onto this stick-like frame and draped over with thoughts, memories, dreams and desires.

I can count all my bones when I know myself well. When I’ve stopped running away and covering over and I’m fed up with all that, then I can sit down and lightly finger each smooth bone like beads on a mala. I can finally get to know what’s underneath.

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/narisa/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

So, Dalai Lama—any last thoughts?

“What should one’s last thought be upon facing death?” was the question posed to the Dalai Lama by one of the 13,000 people in the audience at the Long Beach arena Saturday. His Holiness, somehow both regal and casual ensconced in his swaths of red and saffron robes in an impossibly enormous throne-like chair, thought for a few seconds and then proceeded to not answer the question.

Death is on my mind more than usual lately; two women I know have had their middle-aged husbands die instantly and unexpectedly from massive heart attacks within as many months. Each man left a wife, two young children and a community of close friends and acquaintances in shock at the sudden and seemingly random grasp of death.

No matter how hard I try to wrap my head around the fact that this is in fact completely normal, I’m just not buying it. Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, my naive image of death as it is supposed to be is that one lives to a comfortable old age and then one day lies down to take a nap and never wakes up.

Even my cat didn’t die this way. So why should I still be so surprised when nobody else does?

More food for thought came in the form of Stan Goldberg’s piece, “The Hard Work of Dying” in the November 2009 Shambhala Sun. Goldberg describes hospice patients moving through the dying process, dealing with the difficult emotional work of simplifying their existence, forgiving, asking for forgiveness and letting go of dreams on their way to death.

The piece is concise yet extremely touching, sketching in brief, honest scenes both the successful and not so successful efforts of hospice patients stumbling through unknown territory. Yet it also played into my death fairy tale because they all know they are dying. Knowing is key, I tell myself, to proper preparation. In my death fairy tale I will know, too. But it will be Later.

I love how Pema Chodron puts it in When Things Fall Apart:“The one thing in life that we can really count on is incredibly remote for all of us. We don’t go so far as to say, ‘No way, I’m not going to die,’ because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later.”

But for my two friends’ husbands, Later became Now in literally a heartbeat. So then what?

Which brings me back to the Dalai Lama. While skirting the question of what our last thought should be, he reminded us of the importance of always coming back to the reality of impermanence. He advised us to be mindful of the many forms of impermanence we experience in life and even to meditate on it daily. This will give us familiarity with death, he said. Familiarity will reduce fear, and will make it easier. He ended by adding, “When the time comes for me, I hope I can deal with it well, but I don’t know.” A little ripple of nervous laughter floated through the crowd.

So.

Simplifying. Forgiving. Asking for forgiveness. Letting go. Can’t I just wait on these things until I’m actually dying? Oh right, I forgot—I already am.

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicphoto/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

How Great Thou Art

Sunday was Favorite Hymn Day at church, and we sang medleys of everyone’s favorites sprinkled throughout the service. One stanza transported me back 30 years to a crisp Pennsylvania morning and an elderly couple’s commingled voices spiraling towards the open sky.

Their names were Lorenz and Inez, which as a child I thought were very exotic—all those “z’s”—and they were part of a Christian camping club my family belonged to in the ‘70s. They were the parents of the club’s leader and driving force, a stocky, down-to-earth Born Again Christian named John with a buzz cut and glasses that fastened around his head with a strap. John had a bear’s hug, a watermelon smile and a handshake like a ham sandwich on rye.

Weekends with “the campers” were filled with campfires, volleyball, flashlight tag, potluck dinners with “sweet treat,” tri-carts, rainy day games of Pit in a neighbor’s trailer, finding the perfect stick to poke in the fire, cocoa, roasted marshmallows and mountain pies (two pieces of bread with cherry pie filling in between heated over the fire in a press).

And Sunday mornings were for church. They set up an outdoor service on the campground stage, if there was one, or else in a clearing or empty campsite, with folding chairs for anyone who wanted to come.

“Then sings my soul ...”

The format never strayed too far: testimonials; a children’s story from a club member with his own ventriloquist’s dummy; a message, usually delivered by John; and lots of singing.

“... My savior God to Thee ...”

A staple of the service is Lorenz and Inez singing a duet. Lorenz is tall, lean, square-jawed with a frame of wavy white hair, wearing leisure-suit slacks and a collared short-sleeved shirt. Cataracts cloud his eyes behind clear glasses.

“... How great Thou art ...”

Inez is petite with an ample backside. Her slightly forward-tilting posture, strong nose and tiny mouth give her the impression of a mother sparrow. Gray hair pulled back in a loose bun and wearing a shirtwaist dress, she barely reaches to her husband’s shoulder.

“... How greaaat, Thou aaaaart ...”

When they sing they sometimes close their eyes, Inez holding Lorenz’s hand or perching her arm at his elbow. As the chorus builds, her soprano soars above his workman’s tenor, taking on a choir-lady warble on the high notes as Lorenz works to a crescendo until the final climactic stanza.

I witnessed it so many times it’s indelibly imprinted on my memory. They seemed rooted, in a matter-of-fact way that made an impression on me.

My faith isn’t the same as it was when I was nine, and there are many things I have come to question. But I recognize when I encounter someone who is secure in their faith, regardless of their tradition, and I have grown to appreciate the genuineness that exudes from them.

Usually it’s not the ones who expound the loudest or the most, but those who simply are their faith because they couldn’t be any other way. Lorenz and Inez, under the blue sky of a Pennsylvania Sunday, were like that.

(Photo courtesy of tambrieann via Creative Commons)