Is That All There Is?

or THE END BEGINNING OF DAYS

(because agnostics wrestle with faith too)

by: Me

“Eh-hem. Many of you, I am sure, had the opportunity to travel someplace last week during Spring Break. Whether you were visiting friends or family or just simply escaping this endless cold weather we’ve been having, I can assure you that none of you folks had a more exotic time than I did (chuckles from the audience). I have been bragging to everyone for the past few days that I had the pleasure this last week of officiating the Bingo tournament at the Masonic Home Senior Activities Center (uproarious laughter begins)…and…and…but that’s not the best part…(more laughter)…the best part – the real icing on the cake – was that I got to hand out prizes to the winners (the whole house now quakes with knee-slapping laughter, I start to wonder where they hid the nitrous tanks). HOW’S THAT FOR YOU DISNEY WORLDERS!!! (laughter crescendos before slowly dying down).

No, but seriously. It has been a crazy week. It began with news of the untimely death of a famous and beloved movie actor and ended with more violence in the Middle East. The death of the familiar Hollywood personality at the age of 53 reminded us that another irreplaceable piece of ourselves is forever gone, and it also caused us to clutch our chests and wonder if we too have some latent health condition that can just as quickly and easily terminate our own lives. Lynn Caine, a writer probably best known for her 1974 book Widows, wrote that, “Since every death diminishes us a little, we grieve – not so much for the death as for ourselves.” This woman, Lynn Caine, who wrote a memoir about widowhood which was subsequently turned into a made-for-TV movie that aired on one of the major networks in 1976, was later taken from us in 1987 at the age of 63.

I remember my uncle dying in 1995. He was seven years older than my father, but the two men were alike in every way. I thought of him as a typical lasting epitome of that group of people who a certain famous anchorperson dubbed, “The Tallest Generation Ever.” They were the tallest because when they stood upright, their shadows enveloped the entire globe. They were so big, this anchor person asserts, that by comparison to their stature the world seemed small and easily conquerable. They are supposedly the crowning star that sits atop the highest point of the bell-shaped arch of humankind and civilization. Everything had been leading up to them, and everything that comes after will be a downhill regression into anarchy and immaturity.

Yes, my friends, life is short. Every time somebody we know dies, a piece of us dies along with them. I remember going home after my uncle’s funeral and looking through my family’s old photo albums. My uncle stood there beside me and my parents, frozen in time inside of the 3 inch by 5 inch photographs. I followed the trajectory of his life from middle age until death within the context of my own childhood and adolescence. The memories of my uncle at Christmas Eve parties and high school graduations were still very fresh in my mind at that time. It was hard to believe that he was actually dead, like maybe he had just gone to Hawaii without telling anybody and he was never coming back.

But now when I think of these memories they seem less fresh. Just as old cars rust and accumulate scratches and dents, the memories of my uncle are losing their relevance due to their outdatedness. And it terrifies me. A big part of whatever it was that was still recent and new in my mind in 1995 is becoming vaguer with each passing year. The image of my uncle is being transformed and discolored by the patina of life. I worry that what I remember about him today is more imagined than real, that I am recreating and plagiarizing the past by injecting it with the pictures, language and sounds of my life today?

When I look at old photo albums now and see my uncle’s face staring back at me, the echoes of him are less loud. Time has moved on without him and he exists now in a place that is more foreign. A snapshot taken of my uncle in 1994 shows him proudly kneeling next to a brand new Chevy Silverado, the undetected cancer in his body having not yet ravaged his athletic physique. Everything about the truck, from its fat tires to its mobile phone antenna mounted on the roof, now looks strange due to its dowdiness. Will these things seem even stranger in ten or twenty years as our understanding of styles and trends continues to evolve?

I sometimes wonder if sepia photographs tell the whole story of the late 19^th and early 20^th Century. Are the smells and feelings we typically associate with hundred year old photographs accurate, or are these things somehow caused by the encrustation of time which conceals the way life really was back in those days? Were the stoic and hollow eyed men and women we see in old photographs really that stoic and hollow eyed, or has time moved on to the point that it no longer became necessary to drag their spirits along? Maybe these quaint men and women carried vivacious countenances that exuded life and vitality. Perhaps their eyes were windows to curious, wise and lustful souls. But all we see today are hollow eyed stoic gentleman in funny attire and woman wearing stern masks of preternatural judgment and repression.

The point I’m trying to make people is that we are living in God’s grace right now at this moment. Yesterday came and went and it tasted sweet, but God has a purpose for us right here and now. Take a look around…look at your neighbors…inhale the smells around you…this is life! Today was created for us, tomorrow was created for us! Yes, when we think of the past we ache from nostalgia or we feel an anchor of sadness in our stomachs that there will never be another celebrity like so-and-so, or there will never be another summer like the summer of such-and-such year. It may be true that there will never be another thing which is exactly like a thing that preceded it, but this uniqueness is the beauty of God’s creation! Each day may be similar, but God gives everything a little nudge to make our lives novel and interesting (congregation erupts in happy laughter). Right?…Am I right?…(laughter continues for half a minute before slowly quieting down).

Each day is not a thumbprint people! Monotony is an ugly word, I know we all hate it, but if we stop and think…if we think about this Sunday morning as we sit here – I know some of you are probably having déjà vu (wild laughter) – this Sunday is brand new in its own way, and next Sunday will have something new for us also. As we go about the rest of our days today we might have a fixed schedule that we follow, but nothing ever happens exactly the same…right?

WE CAN’T STAY STUCK IN THE PAST! We can’t wish, for instance, that it was the 1980s again. We can’t lament styles that have come and gone, people that have come and gone, sports teams that have come and gone, musical genres that have come and gone… All we have is this moment that we’re living in right now. It is our duty to make the most of it because this is how new memories are formed. When we let go of our worries that today isn’t turning out to be as good as, say, ten years ago was, we can begin to live and experience all that today has to offer that is new. We may find if we do this that yesterday had its own purpose, but today’s purpose is important and different in its own way.

I’m going to close by quoting a familiar phrase which you all probably know, and maybe it can be attributed to the band Aerosmith, but maybe they lifted it from somewhere. Anyway, the quotation is: “Life’s a Journey, not a Destination.” Life’s a journey….not a destination….I want you all to think about that for a moment.

Our mission shouldn’t be to get somewhere. Friends, we already are here.”