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I attended St. Anne's last night. It was unlike previous Wednesdays Ash I've experienced, partly because the church was so lightly attended. People don't always like thinking about death, and being told "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return," can be a downer. It can also be extremely liberating. Think of your worst problem, the thing in your life that wrenches you the most and causes you the most heart-ache. It won't trouble you. Think of the petty little cares and concerns that plague everyday life. Think of those things that nag your mind and get in the way of even the best times. They'll disappear. Think of your worst fear, the thing that utterly paralyses you. It won't frighten you. Even if your worry is death itself, once past the threshold you'll worry no more. Even an atheist would have that comfort - death cuts all ties to this life - and anyone with a belief in heaven obviously has even more reason not to fear death. Tolkien provided a beautiful description of passing the threshold into the undiscovered country. He describes parting a veil and arriving at a distant shore. In the Return of the King extended DVD it's Gandalf's speech...
Pippin: "I didn't think it would end this way." We can't really conceive what heaven is like. We can't imagine what being in the presence of God will be like without any filter of earthly limitation. All I can apply to, for myself, is music. Some people don't key into music, some appreciate it differently, so this metaphor might not be of any use to you. But for me there is no glory in this life like the transport of music. There are pieces that leave me breathless, basking in a transcendent beauty that is so complete it cannot be described. It's something that only music itself can capture - pure emotion. You can analyze and dissect and, up to a point, you can say what is good or bad about a certain piece. But eventually the concrete of language breaks down and only the medium itself is capable of communicating. That level of joy, the roller coaster feeling of glorious music, is my only touchstone to describe heaven. Not that it's an endless symphony, (although I hear the music is pretty good and the acoustics are flawless) but that it feels like that musical swell...all the time. Even that is too small a description, but we're finite beings and finite beings can't entirely understand an infinite reality. Can't be done, no matter how intelligent we are or how clever a metaphor we arrange...you can't measure an infinite with a finite. Whether or not we can (or want to) describe it, death stands at the end of all our earthly journeys. For some it's soon, for others still far off. But we're not Xeno's arrow...we will hit the target. For me Ash Wednesday is a powerful reminder of that fact and that the life to come deserves at least as much attention as the life that will end. After all, it isn't so bad. |
