by Elizabeth Ihle
October 27, 2013
Readings:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, scene 7, 1599
Life and Death: Conjoined Twins
Life and death are a balanced pair. It is a strange irony that death has been a critical instrument in the persistence of life. Humanity’s age-old dream of eternal life, if every realized, would lock any species into an evolutionary straitjacket, eliminating the flexibility required to adapt to the planet’s ever-changing conditions. By allowing adaptive change to arrive in successive generations, individual mortality enables species to survive over long periods of time.
In the end, however, the species proves as mortal as the individuals. Over the sweep of evolutionary time, it is estimated that 30 billion species have existed since multicellular organisms arose in the explosion of life in the Cambrian era, 550 million years ago. On average, scientists believe, a species exists for some 4 million years before giving way to other life-forms. It is estimated that there may be about 30 million species on Earth today—that means 99.9 per cent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. But all forms of life on the planet today have their beginning in one cell that arose in the oceans perhaps as long as 3.8 million years ago, and from the perspective of the vital force imbued in that first cell, life has been astonishingly persistent and resilient.
–David Suzuki, “Protected By Our Kin,†The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Vancouver/Toronto Greystone, Books, 1997), p. 125.
For All the Saints…
I want to talk about death this morning partly because I’m aging. I’m almost 68, but before I go any further let me acknowledge that some of you have me beaten by a decade or two (or in the case of Jim Geary by over three), but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel my own mortality. I can remember a time, even as a young adult when hardly any of the important people of my life had died. Death was a long way away, but now, of course, it’s a different matter. I’m getting a number of signs that my years are accumulating. I can now remember a half century ago, and every time I mention at 1950s or 60s factoid to a younger person, I can almost see the “old fogy†evaluation go through the head of my listener. I feel like an immigrant to the digital age, struggling to learn new technologies and apps that younger folks adopt so naturally. If all that weren’t enough, my body is getting creakier, and I no longer take my knees for granted. I find myself checking the obituary column in the Daily News Record mainly to make sure I’m not in it. From multiple sources I’m getting daily reminders that death overtakes us all. This season is a good time of the year to talk about it.
Halloween and simply autumn are fun. I enjoy the smell of autumn, the color of the trees, the jack-o’-lanterns, and simply this dark time of the year. Buried beneath all this fun (pun intended) is the fact that plants are dying or hibernating and the year circles to a close. But most of us, though, especially the young, don’t think about that as we hurry about in our daily routines. Although the stores are full of Halloween decorations—witches, spiders, pumpkins, and even fake scary tombstones—they don’t make us aware that this holiday began as All Hallows Eve, the predecessor to two celebrations of the dead. The first is celebrated by Christians as All Saints Day or as All Hallows; by pagans as Samhain, the end of the harvest and the slaughter of the animals that would provide food to celebrants until the spring; and by other cultures simply as the Day of the Dead, the time of the year when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest. In a number of cultures families visit graveyards, decorate the graves of loved ones, and even share a picnic. The second holiday is the day after that, November 2nd, All Souls’ Day, a Christian holiday that I hardly knew existed until I started researching this sermon. I know that Asian and African traditions and Native American traditions honor the dead as well, but I’m going to confine my remarks this morning to Western culture which most of us know much better.
I think that the appeal of these two early November holy days grows on us as we age because we simply become more aware of death. I like Shakespeare’s “All the World’s a Stage†monologue. The fact that he wrote it in 1599, over 400 years ago, and that his words still ring true indicates that maybe we humans haven’t changed all that much despite so many technological advances. His seven stages of man seem to still fit quite well. It’s a good reminder that previous generations, despite their different and perhaps slower and more difficult lifestyles, were still most likely to feel very much like we do today: in the prime of life the world is our oyster and we are at least to some degree in control of our own destinies. As we age, though, we realize that our control is far more limited than we might have thought a few decades back and we understand more clearly that death is approaching.
Earlier this month, October 6th, in fact, the Rev Kirk Ballin spoke to us, and in his sermon, “How Then Shall We Live?†he told us that accepting the fact that we are going to die frees us to be true to ourselves, to live perhaps in a way we want to be remembered by our descendants. While we may accept this point in theory, it’s not always easy to carry out, especially if one lives into advanced old age when we return to the Bard’s “second childishness and mere oblivion.†Shakespeare doesn’t make old age very appealing, does he?
Kirk reminded us that realizing that we are going to die can help us live more authentically, and so I need not spend more time on that. I want us to consider this morning is all those who have died before us, well at least the humans who have gone before. If you really want a broad perspective on death, consider the reading by Canadian science writer David Suzuki. If he is correct, not only are we going to be forgotten, we are going to be extinct. Now that’s not exactly cheery news, but I think it’s true. Instead of just remembering the humans who have gone before, maybe we should be looking at all of the 99.9% of species who no longer exist! But I don’t think I can quite stretch myself that far right now, so we’ll just concentrate on our human predecessors.
Let’s start with our families. We tell stories about our families, but for many, about three generations of remembrance is all most of us might reasonably get, unless someone in our family has made an effort to preserve memories or to do some genealogical research. My former dissertation advisor has written his memoirs for his grandchildren, and I suspect that document will get passed down a couple more generations. Some of you will recall the Reverend Dr. John Irvine who used to do sermons for us from time to time. John has family photos and correspondence going back as far as 1830s and has done some amazing family history with it. The documentation is so large that it really takes up a lot of space in his house, and his family is so very lucky that he has been willing to keep all that material and organize it in a usable manner. I suspect that most of us are more like me with little family history beyond a generation or so since few in my family have had an interest in it . All I’ve collected is just in a three-ring binder in my basement, and I hope to pass on copies of that material to my children, but I have no control over their interest, and so maybe even my small collection will disappear shortly after I do.
The Sunday before Kirk Ballin spoke, Lama Tsony spoke to us about the Enlightened Mind sought by Buddhists. One of his comments was the importance of remembering our ancestors because without them we obviously wouldn’t be here. “Thank your parents; thank your grandparents, and then your great grandparents,†he said. That is obviously very good advice, but now I want to expand our gratitude even further.
We have two holidays ahead of us: All Saints Day and then All Souls Day. So what’s the difference? Various branches of Christianity as well as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism have saints of one sort or another, and in most cases they have elaborate protocols for determining them. That’s fine; holy people are okay by me, and I think it’s nice that we remember them. Some religious traditions make a distinction between the holy folks—the saints—and the rest of us, and we the plain old folk are called the souls. It’s us souls that I’ve been wondering more about, the rest of us, those of us who just do the best we can in life: the folks who contribute somehow to making the world a better place but who will not likely be remembered for very long. We will eventually join the ranks of the unremembered millions. The folks over the millennia who created shelter, cleared the land, who eventually built bridges, roads, buildings; who reared and educated the next generation, who nursed and cured illnesses, who created art and music. The ones who created plumbing and modern day refrigeration. The folks who just over 100 years ago built this building, the Dale Enterprise School. In some religious traditions these folks too are called saints, and that’s fine by me too. Not particular about the title, I think that’s the spirit of our second hymn this morning, “For All the Saints,†for all the folks who have gone before.
While my advancing age is one stimulus for my volunteering to do this service, there’s a second. It’s the fact that I have been fortunate enough to have done a good bit of European travel in the last couple years. Doing so has given me more perspective on how old Europe’s culture is compared to our own and has made me wonder about all the generations there who have gone before. A very early example is Stonehenge. Archaeologists know that people were building on that site by 3000 BC, 5000 years ago, but we have no idea who they were. But the thousands who view Stonehenge today have profited by the anonymous labors of their predecessors. Another example. As I viewed the Roman coliseum for the very first time in my life a couple years ago, my immediate thought was what happened to all the people who built that huge and long enduring amphitheater. If you look up that question on Wikipedia, you learn that the Coliseum was begun in 70 AD by the Emperor Vespasian and completed ten years later by his successor Titus, but I don’t think they really did it. While they may get credit for this marvel that has stood nearly 2000 years, they didn’t actually lift a finger. I’m wondering who its architects were and even more importantly for us this morning, who were the poor suckers who actually laid all that stone and concrete? What about the countless thousands who died in the Coliseum as part of the entertainment for others? As I traveled to France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Britain, similar questions kept popping up as I viewed old buildings and streets, monuments, the contents of so many marvelous and wonderful museums. Who were all the unknowns who contributed to my enjoyment of such places and who made my world better?
Maybe if we are especially famous or infamous, we’ll be remembered longer. Bless historians and archeologists: they keep memories alive, but even they can only do so much. I certainly don’t want to get into the ideas of heaven and hell or judge who is worthy of remembrance and who is not, but today I want to concentrate on just plain good people. In large part, those who were kind to their fellow humans and animals and who made the world better. I suspect that most of them, intent on their daily interactions and productive work, didn’t even think much about how their efforts would build a better world for future generations.
Since I think we have a tendency to take our everyday comforts for granted, we have fairly short memories of architects, engineers, and others who have improved our creature comforts. I have thought for a long time the folks that have the best shot of being remembered the longest are the really famous writers, artists, and musicians. Take our friend Shakespeare, for example. Or Johann Sebastian Bach. His music is probably some of the best known in the Western world, although he was forgotten for fifty or more years after his death in 1750. For those of you old enough to remember 36 years, 2 months, and 7 days ago, or in other words August 20, 1977, you may remember that Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #2, along with music by composers and images of life on earth were recorded on a golden record and then shot off into outer space by the space probe Voyager 2. So maybe Bach may have a much better “shot†at immortality than nearly anyone else if some extra terrestrials intercept Voyager.
Wandering through the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Tate Britain in London has given me opportunities to see wonderful art, some of which is thousands of years old, but what about all those paintings and sculpture that I just passed by to get to the Da Vincis, the Botticellis, the Vermeers, and the Turners? Art historians may know all those lesser known but clearly highly skilled artists, but the majority of museum visitors simply ignore these works despite their very high degree of artistic virtuosity. So being a creative artist may get you remembered longer most of us, but still even most artists who are eventually forgotten.
But most of us are not even artists. We’re just the plain folk, and I suspect that most of us will be forgotten in a couple generations like so many generations before us.
I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure that on some level the law of the conservation of mass applies to us. French scientist Antoine Lavoisier discovered it in the late 1700s, and his discovery made way for further work in mechanics and atomic theory. Matter can be changed but not destroyed. Our bodies—our blood, our bones, organs, and muscles—have been on the earth in some form or another for a long time. In that sense we are part of the 99.9% of species who are already extinct. We are just privileged to be using this matter right now. I’ve always liked that famous quotation attributed to Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.†We always profit from those who have gone before, and the idea of that quote, which was not original to Newton and actually dates back to the 12th century, acknowledges that important fact. But we, our bodies, are part of those giants who have gone before.
As a former educator, I cannot resist the temptation to end by giving you some homework: over the next few days as the veil between the living and dead thins, think more broadly about those who have gone before. Not only about the family you come from but also about all our distant cousins, unremembered but who somehow made the world a better place. Remember that this is our time upon life’s stage, and we need to appreciate and enjoy it. But we need also to think about those who have died over the millennia. As you enjoy your Halloween festivities and the subsequent All Saints and All Souls Days, give a quiet moment to remember countless generations of the dead who have given us the gift of a better life. As theologian Stephanie Paulsell recently wrote,
“We need one another, the living and the dead, to glimpse who we are and who we might become.â€
Stephanie Paulsell, The Christian Century, May 16, 2012, p. 35.
So may it be.