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“There is a season for everything, and a time for every occupation under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die,” a declaration attributed to Qoheleth, a sage by profession and a Palestinian Jew living in the third century BCE. Qoheleth and others developed the Book of Ecclesiastes as a corrective to counter the empty philosophies of Stoicism, Cynicism and Epicureanism that had vulgarized life in Israel and eviscerated traces of the Sacred. Life was empty; knowledge, virtue, love illusory.
Yet, a sense of the Sacred permeates this short book, sacralizing the totality of life: its impetus, Creator God and no other.
Fast forward to the present. Despite later prophetic utterances, even those of the God-Man Jesus of Nazareth, not much has changed, save for solitaries harboring the Sacred within their depths, save for some churches whose Spirit-filled members give thanks and serve with joyful hearts—such is my perception.
I return to yesterday’s green flag and my continuing eligibility for receiving hospice care— “Six months or less to live,” I was told. Others have judged the proximity of my physical death, as if Creator God has no say in the “work of his hands.” The obsession to conform to Medicare’s rules and regs, constantly under revision, keeps the sickened system contorted beyond fixing. The specter of this fiscal dragon continues sprouting new fire-spewing crowned-heads, terrifying its work force.
Qoheleth was more than accurate when he declared “a time to be born and a time to die.” No health care executive can make this decision for me. I belong to Another.
During meditation, fragrant balm from this text soothed my psyche and enlarged the sense of my destiny:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth…the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
From the book of Revelation 21: 1 –5.
Only willingness is necessary to participate in this vision.
This afternoon, it feels slikkery outdoors—well named for its mouse-gray sky emitting misty hiccoughs and leaving droplets: they’re everywhere, if you look for them. They fashion ephemeral designs upon window screens and when engorged, resemble tobogganers careening and zigzagging down mountain trails.
Droplets appear upon tips of denuded shrubs like shy dancers awaiting the cue to go on stage; when swollen with the orchestra’s rhythm they hurtle into the arms of lower branches, until the next letting go, until there is no other.
Droplets also cling to porch roofs and piggyback others more developed before smacking the pavement below; its pinging jostles the enveloping silence, also slick.
Droplets also cling to holly and red-and-white ribbons that decorate mailboxes, and to outdoor lights that frame the exteriors of houses, giving them a lustrous sheen.
Such slikkery waters depths of dryness like grace: a radical re-wiggling into harmonious change that draws gratitude.
Heart Whisperings 