Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, May 6, 2009

 Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only
putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of
Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel laureate in Literature, born on this day, 1861


Why are there images in almost every religion about The Beyond - about what “happens” after we die? Why is it that human beings can’t bear the thought that there is nothing beyond the Time when we have “lightly dance(d) on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of the leaf”? Every religion has a description of that “time beyond” (except perhaps classical Judaism). But really, no one really knows what might be coming next. We have just created possibilities, pictures, visions of what it might be like. Tagore created a beautiful word image of the possibility of Life Beyond - a “not extinguishing the light” ….. a “putting out the lamp because the dawn has come”. Utterly, utterly, exquisitely charming, uplifting, encouraging.

I know why we humans have these images. We want to give ourselves wings to help us soar in and through and yes, above our little time on the “tip of a leaf”. We give ourselves a way of not being pulled down, of not being held back from a full living of this Mystery that we consciously inhabit NOW. This is one of the glories of being Human - we grasp the infinite possibilities of our four score years and ten! We understand mortality – and we seek the power to cram every possibility into those years.

Tagore has, I think, spoken Wisdom. The Past is gone and the Future is Unknown. We have Today in which to live – to “dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of the leaf”. It is said that the greatest gift given by the Christ is freedom from the fear of the power of Sin and Death. Were this gift not offered, we might easily huddle in paralysis, “freaked out” and traumatized. But simply knowing, metaphorically, that a mansion and a new Life awaits us beyond the grave, we are liberated to live the NOW. To give it all we can, uninhibited by any “drag” whatsoever – especially the “drag” of having to avoid mistakes.

Knowing there is a “dawn to come” isn’t meant to stifle us, to make us followers of petty rules. It is meant to help us throw off all chains and to live this earthly Life with abandon. What happens when we fall off the tip of the leaf is, the Gospel tells us, not ours to worry about.

Brian+