Wednesday December3, 2008
Uncomfortable eternity
Perhaps it\’s the steady shortening of daylight here in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps it\’s the pall of cloud that squats on the valley during November. Perhaps it\’s the steady barrage of bad news – unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; massacres in Africa; imploding stock markets in Toronto; exploding terrorism in Mumbai…
Whatever the cause, I find myself thinking that the dominant characteristic of humans is not that we have big brains or opposable thumbs, nor that we use tools and language, but that we can damage our world on a grander scale than any other species.
And I realize I\’m not looking forward to eternity.
Idealized views
The Family Circus comic strip offered a conventional image of eternal life the other day – a benign grandfather, wearing a long nightshirt, gazing down from a cloud at his descendants.
It struck me that this reflected a very limited view of life – a family utterly insulated from events in the world around them.
Sure, I would love to watch as my grandchildren grow up, graduate, have their own families, make their mark on the world.
But why would I want to spend eternity watching the human species mess up again and again?
Because, after all, we who had become immortal would know how things should be done. We could see ahead to the consequences of greed and stupidity.
Of course, we\’d also see countless daily acts of love and compassion, of thoughtfulness and generosity. But it takes only one contractor cutting corners on a school, one pulp mill poisoning a river system, one over-eager finger on the nuclear button, to render those kindly acts null and void.
This life
I think I\’d be just as relieved to say goodbye, to quit fretting, to have awareness end with death. I\’d rather exit hoping my grandchildren\’s generation would do better than my own, than watch helplessly while they made mistakes I can\’t even imagine yet.
“In classical Judaism, this life is all there is,” rabbi Reuben Slonim used to lecture me. Mainstream Buddhism would agree.
The Indian poet Kabir – who, like Kahlil Gibran, refused to be captive to any one religion – wrote these lines 600 years ago:
What you call “salvation”
belongs to the time before death….
“This is dangerous thinking,” Jim continued. “It takes the wind out of the sails of that school of thought that claims we must be constantly reminded of our sinfulness…”
Whatever happens on the other side of death will happen – que sera sera. But here and now is where we can make a difference, for good or ill. Whatever we do, whatever we neglect to do, will send ripples far into the future. Even if we\’re not there to see it.
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Copyright © 2008 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.