Part 1. "The heart and soul of our everyday living"

[WARNING: You my find this "heavy" going - metaphysical musings on live and death, the seen and unseen, the "...spiritual and emotional dimensions of human existence – in other words the heart and soul of our everyday living." (Sabina Spencer (2004) Heart of Leadership. I plan to take this theme and push it along paths that I have been exploring for the past 40 years. Some of you may feel I’m pushing it right over the top. Take heart, I am not trying to sell you anything. No-thing ventured, No-thing gained.]

While we lived in Redstone, Colorado, my wife and I attended the Aspen Chapel, a non-denominational, and some would say, liberal, progressive congregation with spiritual leanings in more than one direction, tho' principally Lutheran/Methodist/Episcopalian and a soupçon of Buddhism. I occasionally served as a lay "message-sharer," no preachers here. What follows is a mash-up of ideas taken from some of my "messages."

----------------------------

Good Morning, rationalists, atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, pagans, and miscellaneous others. Did I miss anybody?

No? OK, good. I will leave it to you to decide to which group I belong after hearing what I am going to say.

On becoming aware that I was recently diagnosed and am being treated for a particularly nasty form of cancer, several people have asked me, “Has this experience changed your attitude about life.”

The first time I was asked, I realized that I didn’t have a ready answer, so I responded with the first thing that popped into my head. “Well, “I said, “it’s a relief that I no longer have to worry about eating hamburgers anymore, as it is highly unlikely that I’ll die from heart disease.”

From the expression on the questioners’ faces, it was apparent that this was not the expected nor the desired answer.

Gray-haired folks may remember the 1983 Monte Python movie, "The Meaning of Life." On reflection, after seeing it, I thought, "Well that was a meaningless movie."

Over time, I came to the realization that, "Yes, "life" per se is meaningless, it simply is, an existential reality, a "vessel without content." It is the act of living that fills the vessel with substance and gives meaning to our lives. Life is no big deal. We are given the opportunity to live without having to ask for it.

Like "life," death simply is, an existential form without substance. Dying, on the other hand, seems to be a very big deal in people’s minds. Why is that?

Death is no big deal – given our fragile bodies, it’s easy to achieve and inevitable. Is death from disease any worse than death from aging? Sooner maybe, but no worse or better. The big deal is that, in our minds, death is a scary proposition – it is the fear of dying and its attendant trauma that is the big deal. Death, like life, is meaningless, the big deal is the way we give it form and meaning through action.

[Please note that although fear of death looms large among those of us of the Western, Christian persuasion, it is by no means universal among the groups I greeted this morning.]

Being able to overcome the fear of death by focusing on the quality of living is a very big step on the way to better living.