Resting life and death in peace

First posted in September 2014

Our culture avoids it, fears it, is attracted to it, and uses it as a threat.

Death.

But every now and then, an anomaly shows up. I met a couple who raised 7 children, successfully, on a farm. The mother told me, “The farm life taught the children about life and death.”

Interesting. She spoke of life and death as equal, mortal elements that shouldn’t absorb so much attention when the true task is to live.

How can we live life and death?

By not making life and death something they are not.

Mortal life and death are not immortal or lasting.

Life isn’t a competition for wealth and fame and human approval. Death isn’t something we escape or dodge.

Life expresses itself through us as spiritual beings. Life is God, manifesting itself, in countless individuality, through us.

Death is the human interpretation of spiritual life unattached to mortality. Someone dies and we realize they are still alive in consciousness.

Human life and death can be beautiful, but it can also be ugly. We read in Matthew 16:21-23:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” ²³ But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

I bet it was somewhat of a struggle, but Jesus didn’t focus on human life and death. Christ Jesus lived immortality; he expressed integrity, forgiveness, courage, and wisdom.

Added 2019, from 21st Century Science and Health:

“The complicated mis-creations must finally give place to the glorious forms which we sometimes glimpse through the eye of divine Mind when the mental picture is spiritual and eternal. Take the time to look past the fading, sensational pictures. Gain the true sense of life. Rest your gaze on the unsearchable realm of Mind. Look ahead and act as possessing all power from Truth and Love in whom you have your being.”

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My cat didn’t have nine lives

To my horror, I recently found one of our cats killed, ran over by a vehicle. I’d gone out unusually early for my daily walk, and knew instantly that the dead weight in the road ahead was our cat. I was mortified and started bawling like a calf that lost her mother and was starving and scared.

I carried the cat back to the house and buried it with tears blurring my vision. The entire rest of the day, my emotions were scattered. I broke out crying on a whiff of a memory, and there were many good memories.

It was the image of the dead cat that stuck in my brain. I tried to shake it. I begged God to take it away—when I wasn’t throwing anger God’s way—why couldn’t God keep the cat safe?

My writing projects came to a screeching halt. They required inspiration, devotion, intuition, knowledge, none of which could be found in the immensity of grief that poured into my soul.

I started cleaning out closets. Literally. I sorted through items that had been stuffed into closets over the past few years. Piles accumulated. A pile to give a way, a pile to recycle, a pile to throw away, a pile to find a better location for.

I decided to look at pictures of the cat. It was easy. I had a million pictures. I took them when the cat was cute, entertaining, compassionate, every second. The bad image started to fade.

The next morning, I heard the thought, “Cheryl, it’s time to go back to your writing, you can do it.”

My conscience was struck. That thought was exactly what my cat told me. Was this the new form of the cat? Or, had it always been the cat’s form? Because the furry form I’d typically attached to the cat was gone?

Answers to those questions didn’t matter. The feeling of all-presence rubbed itself on me and I felt at peace.