(This is gonna be a long one, so you might wanna get some snacks.)
I’m deliberately using that word, “great”, in a very specific sense. I mean it to connote someone who is important. I’m not making a value judgment about that importance, at least not at this time. I could also mean it as someone who possesses a quality to an extreme or notable degree. He was very much a “man” in the sense of being capable of the shockingly horrible as well as the stunningly beautiful.
So are we all.
While I’m still formulating a response about the extreme reaction to his passing, it has helped me understand something about my own faith. One of the basic principles I try to predicate my life on, an axiom of my existence, the assumption from which my other personal truth’s flow, is that life is precious and its loss is always to be mourned. I offer no real justification or explanation of the fundamentalism of this principle other than one can’t build a house without some sort of foundation. I had to start somewhere and, to me, this seemed a very natural place to begin building my house.
One of the first reasons I was drawn from a sort of hopeful agnosticism to The Religious Society of Friends and liberal Quakers was the correspondence between my prime assumption and the basic Quaker belief that all human life has value and equality because all human life contains “that of God”, the divine spark and Inner Light, that directly links us to something greater. Finally, after many years of searching, a faith and a religion had added to my personal understanding of the world instead of asking or forcing me to detract from it. It gave me a deeper reason to believe the things I felt and assumed to be true and, as far as I’m concerned, that is vital to any religious process.
Stemming from my stated basic principle, I believed that, for religion to be personally useful, it must remind us of our shared experience. It must be a source of constantly unfolding joy, a joy derived from the shared experience of life. The major focus of life is carving out the notion of “I”, of defining who we are and what makes us different from others. While this is good and as it should be, it leads to an inevitable sense of isolation. Once we start looking at the world through the defined eyes of an adult, we sometimes forget the more fluid sensibilities and camaraderie of a child. Religion, for it to be anything more than just another way to divide, must remind us of our connection and allow us, in our adulthood, to see the world with the care and compassion of a child.
One of the terms used for Friends is “Children of the Light” in reference, I believe, to our belief in the Inner Light. We make a choice to walk in that light and allow it to illuminate both our path and our actions. Sometimes, walking in that light is hard. It allows us to see things we might rather not and it shows us how long the path before us. Sometimes, just walking in that light is too much and we turn from the light, from our path, seeking shade.
The thing is, the Light isn’t impatient. It’s not a candle, slowly burning down, demanding immediate action, or the harsh Sun blistering down, insistently washing all color from the landscape. Instead it is the comforting glow of life, emanating from all things, even to the point where our own path is illuminated by itself, showing us which way to go if we are willing to look. Even in the shade we seek from time to time, there is Light. When we are ready to step out from our shade and return to our path, if we ever truly stepped away from it, the Light is there, still steady, still bright, still ready to comfort us and lead us on.
Recently, I’ve stepped away from my path…a lot. From the stresses of buying a new home to the common, everyday things like driving. Seriously, when I get behind a wheel, it’s like I’m possessed by Andrew Dice Clay. Wait, he’s not dead. It’s like I’m possessed by the career of Andrew Dice Clay.
Kidding aside, it took the death of a great man to remind me of my path and acknowledge just how far I’d come looking for shade. More specifically, it took a comment on his life and religious life in general.
I won’t repost the comment, as it was rather badly phrased and it’s not the words I’m worried about, but the idea behind them. The commenter wondered if it was possible for a stern moralist to be truly religious, in a way. The stern moralist, instead of using God’s joy as their compass, their light, they focus on the rejection of evil.
It seems simple, but I believe there is truth here. Like so many things, being human among them, it all depends on one’s chosen frame of reference.
So I’m making a choice and am ready to respond to the death of a great man. It’s my choice and my response and I ask no one else to endorse it or think less of them if they don’t.
I’ve sat too long in the shade. It’s time to once again return to my path, a path that began so many years ago with the basic principle that all life is precious. A path who’s steps, when I retrace them, amaze me, who’s horizon daunts me but who’s Light comforts me.
Getting back on that path begins with a step. I vehemently disagreed with this great man on pretty much everything, from his notion of social issues to his perversion of evangelism to how he made his money. I’m leaving that in the shade, though, because its just weighing me down and making it harder to walk along my path.
Instead, I’m choosing to give thanks.
I give thanks for a man who established an AIDS hospice for people living with this terrible disease.
I give thanks for a man who established a home for single mothers who were unable to support both themselves and their children.
I give thanks for a man who established a rehabilitation center for people dealing with addiction and seeking to walk out of a shade much darker than my own.
I give thanks for a man who wasn’t perfect (then again, who among us is), but who apologized for his mistakes and, when he spoke in the heat of passion, was later able to see where that passion carried him astray and show remorse for it.
I give thanks for a man who brought joy into the lives of so many, gave them hope, a sense of purpose, many of them elderly and generally forgotten or ignored by society at large.
I give thanks for a man who’s actions motivated so many people, on both sides of the issues he worked in, to get involved with the governance of our society and to stand up for what they believed in, even when it put them in direct opposition to him.
I give thanks for a man who reminded Christians that words are easy and actions are important.
I give thanks for a man who’s friends and intimates say was a kind and personable man, despite the tenor of his public speech, and who was truly capable of disagreeing with lifestyles while still genuinely loving and even liking those who felt differently.
I give thanks for a man who, like me, walked along a path. Without ever meeting, we sometimes shared our path and walked side by side. More often, our paths took wildly different routes. Even then, we still both walked a path, occasionally seeking shade, and that walking bound us together as it binds all things together.
So here’s a Jane Siberry song that I think may be about romantic love, but I’m thinking of a different type of love today and it still applies.
