A New Reading With Apologies To Luke

Column by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers on 6 January 2022 1 Comments

Last year, at the height of the pandemic (or is this the height of the pandemic?), a clergy colleague asked me to write a new version of the birth of Jesus that might preserve the radical message of Luke but translate it into more contemporary metaphors.

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Question

One of the last books that I bought of Bishop Spong was “Eternal Life: A New Vision”.  He is quoted as saying:  “Death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness”   

So, how does this journey into timelessness relate to our Christian concept of Heaven?   Is this beyond Heaven which is one of the phrases on the book cover?

Answer

Dear Tom,

Thank you for your question.  When I went to visit my mother when she was dying, and after several days had to return to work so I went to her, sitting in a chair, to say my goodbye.  She said to me, “Tim, you know I am not afraid to die.”  And I said, “yes I do.  And I know why.”  “Why?” She asked.  “Because you are curious; and because you are looking forward to an adventure.”  She said, “Exactly!”  We kissed goodbye and ten days later she died.

So I think journey and adventure are synonyms in that regard.  No one I know has better named this adventure we call death and afterlife than M.C. Richards, the poet, philosopher, potter and painter, who was a good friend of mine and an esteemed faculty member for years.  I share her poem here, composed on the day she learned she was dying.  She lived in a Steiner community for handicapped adults and she contrasts patriarchal views of death to her own. 

I am Dying

Four children are singing ‘ring around the rosy’ here      
         where I am drinking my morning coffee with hot milk.
I was an English major in school—
         so many famous lines about death:
“Death be not proud”!
         Such a masculine presence—
part of our paternalistic culture—and religion.

 
I relax into someone’s arms.
I feel a softness as of sleep,
a gentleness that is friendly.

 
The children are riding their bicycles through my room,
they do not see me or the walls.

 
I think of Eliot’s Hollow Men
‘Is it like this,” they ask
         ‘In death’s other kingdom—
         walking alone when we are
         trembling with tenderness,
         lips that would kiss, form prayers to broken stone.’
Those lines brim with self-pity
         and accusation –
Like Thomas Hardy’s ‘The terrible antilogy of
making figments feel.’

 
Oh no, now is not then.
I do not feel betrayed or bereft,
         It’s more like the Chattanooga Choo choo:
the great traffic of evolution
and I am carrying my bit of being
free of agenda –
                  open to a future
Ready to experiment, be creative, serve
be beautiful, be real,
be nowhere
be no one I already know
be birthing myself
         waves and particles
backpacking in the hereafter.* 

 
No patriarchal self-pity here! 

About “timelessness.” All mysticism is a suspension of time.  I have often told my students, “when you can ask ‘where did the time go?’ you have just had a mystical experience.”  Timelessness and mysticism go together. Meister Eckhart talks about the “eternal now.” 

Mysticism is a taste of what is to come and emphasizes how the “eternal now” is an experience in this life, not just a promise for the future.  Francis of Assisi spoke about the “first death” and the “second death.”  We undergo a dying both in the Via Positiva of awe and in the Via Negativa of the dark night of the soul.  And Thomas Aquinas talks about the first and second Resurrection as well.

Our bodily death is our “second dying” and we are told both in Christianity and other traditions, that angels accompany us on that journey which is a light-filled one.

The actual word “heaven” carries lots of baggage with it for many people.  It is important to re-evaluate it, deconstruct it, call on the poets and artists to reimagine it so that it becomes more real again.  I am glad Bishop Spong did so and you are doing so by the question you are asking and I hope my efforts here have been some help. 

~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

 

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