Loneliness invades a man. It bores in amidst the classes and theological debates in the hallway, the cold beer at the end of the day among friends. It comes upon me when I realize I am not the man I was, and am not the man I will be. Strip away the black shirt, the tab collar, the classes the masses, the breviary and Morning Prayer and all you have is a man in the likeness of his creator, God. Somehow, it’s not enough. It’s incomplete, an alarming mess in a world defined by pixels and megabytes instead of loved ones and community.
The question of a lifetime: Does man need saving, like the Judeo-Christian teaching proclaims or does he save himself, as the Buddhist path seems to suggest. Does it matter? Life marches on until we arrive at death. We have no choice in the matter. A friend lies on his death bed at Saint Mary’s, more than forty years a priest and as feisty as ever. “No one gets out of this life alive,” he reminded me. We can define our life and in so doing, define our death. Our world is really in our head. Not only the Gospel message, but every message we receive is received according to the mode of the receiver.
It is this hearing, and consequently the defining that happens as a result of our soul’s journey, that makes a life. Most days it seems to be enough to smile, but this day isn’t one of them. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
No comments:
Post a Comment