We Are Member Guests of Existence
Given by James Covington on March 6th, 2005
The colors were magnificent. Brilliant blues, resplendent reds, sunny yellows, incandescent orange, luminous turquoise, razzle-dazzle patterns and stripes, all splashed upon tranquil schools of fish, imbued upon ancient fossils and rocky coral, grounded in deep sandy reefs, bathing in the light from above. Occasionally, a large, intimidating species might glide and swagger just below me or brazenly dart and peer confidently into my mask.
And then came the deep blue where the shoal suddenly drops off and you gaze into eternity. The rays of the sun gleamed through the waters, deep down into space, glistening like smoky flares from spouts of fire. It reminded me of those after-death experiences people report when they describe being transported through a tunnel of light.
And there I was, floating above it all, sucking in air with all my might, holding my mask on tight, lest my nose be slowly congested by ocean water, demanding to be swallowed. Yuck! The mask was not the problem. It was the mustache that weakened the barrier and allowed the seepage.
But, oh, it didn’t matter. I was having fun. As we used to say in my childhood youth in Tennessee—it was more fun than drinking buttermilk! I was steeped in awe and wonder. I had been transported to a different reality. Where was I? Well, you know where I was. I was snorkeling in the warm, translucent waters of the Caribbean off the coast of a Honduran island—miles and miles from email, phone calls, the pressing demands of work and a world filled with strife and uncertainty. The glory of this moment rested in the ability to once again appreciate the miracle of the creation—the miracle of life itself and to absolutely savor it. There, peering into the deep blue, with the wondrous orchestra of movement and color just behind me, I could for a moment absorb the miracle, the real miracle.
The real miracle is simply being aware that every day we live is in itself a miracle—and responding to that miracle with awe, wonder, praise, appreciation, and with some sense of obligation to hold up the human end of our bargain with the cosmos—of which we are, after all, a member-guest.
As long as I am here in this bountiful and unpredictable world, I am a member, thus I have a responsibility to nurture and care for this miracle creation of which I am a part. It’s a brief membership, though. So you might say I am a member-guest. The cosmos existed long before I arrived and will probably continue on into the eons after I am gone. I am here for only a minuscule segment of time.
The poet Mary Oliver wrote:
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
What a wonderful sentiment! The poets are perhaps more helpful in looking at life whole than the scientists, but let us not forget that our knowledge of cosmic things gives our lives perspective in the great scheme of things. I recall a favorite Harry Golden essay in which he sits musing in a restaurant about the vastness of the universe - the stars and planets and galaxies and black holes and all the rest of our amazing heavenly home. He concludes by saying that in view of all that, it seems inconsequential that the waitress brings string beans instead of limas.
I like to read about the heavens - a heaven I can believe in - far more wondrous than the thought of my small self being made immortal. I’ve lost track of the figures - they keep changing as astronomers make their educated guesses on how old the universe is; I can’t put my finger on how old creation is - surely manifold more than the meager 4004 years of church tradition. I can’t remember if it is expanding or contracting. I can’t recall how tiny the primordial mass was at the time of the Big Bang, or if we are in a state of ultimate entropy when the whole great cosmic ball of wax will come to an inglorious end.
The Hebrew poets before Jesus, without our scientific understanding of time and space, nonetheless had a fundamental spiritual grasp of humanity’s place in the great chain of creation: “When I consider the moon and the stars, the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, what is humanity that Thou art mindful of us, yet Thou has made us little lower than the angels and crowned us with honor and with glory.”
In the Book of Job we encounter a similar perspective: After Job complains about his suffering, the Lord’s voice thunders out of the whirlwind: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?… Who determined its measurements… on what were its bases sunk… who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”
The Lord’s voice - in this literary masterpiece - goes on for two whole chapters dressing down Job for complaining about his human lot. Who does he think he is, anyway? But then the Lord remembers Job is not the Creator, merely a creature, just a guest of existence - and admonishes him to “Gird up your loins like a man… deck yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor.” Being a guest of existence in this cosmos is no insignificant matter - it’s just that it is helpful to keep our cosmic status in mind. The cosmos is not all about us.
All of this stretches my mind - and my heart - and my spirit - to be a part of such a miracle. And I think of the conversation between the astronomer and the theologian. The astronomer said, “Astronomically speaking, humans are negligible.” To which the theologian replied, “Astronomically speaking, we are the astronomers.”
We are a “temporary expression of the forces of the universe… obliged to make our contribution to what has been called “the boundless sweep of being.” But still, we are only guests who know what we are.
Robert Ardrey, in his remarkable book, African Genesis, pulled together this infinite and eternal reality and our finite and limited existence in time and space with these memorable words: “Time, death, and the space between the stars, constitutes the substance of the woman who made your breakfast this morning, and of the man who got off the train as you were getting on it.”[9]
In the nitty-gritty of our day-to-day existence, we most often forget we are players in a great cosmic drama at which biblical writers and subsequent poets can only hint - at which the early astronomers with their naked eyes and contemporary astronomers with their powerful telescopes can only marvel. We may be bit players, but great drama consists not only of the stars, but also the bit actors who play their parts and play them well.
It is the task of religion to help us understand that in being cosmic “temps” we are an essential part of the picture, that being a guest of existence entails a certain response from us. We not only should savor the world, we must also work to honor and save it. The prayer of the dying, as Annie Dillard suggests, is not “please,” but “thank you.”
That is the spirit of our memorial services when we honor our beloved dead. We acknowledge their death as a normal and natural part of life and we grieve at its end; we celebrate their life in all its uniqueness of triumph and defeat, joy and sorrow; and we remind ourselves that life goes on - that we are part of a living tradition.
At such occasions I often share a modern parable told by the great black preacher Howard Thurman, “Planting for the Ages:”
“I watched him for a long time. He was so busily engaged in his task that he did not notice my approach until he heard my voice, then he raised himself erect with all the slow dignity of a man who had exhausted the cup of haste to the very dregs. He was an old man as I discovered before our conversation was over, a full 81 years. Further talk between us revealed that he was planting a small grove of pecan trees; the little tree-lets were not more than two-and-a-half or three feet in height. My curiosity was unbounded. ‘Why did you not select larger trees so as to increase the possibility of your living to see them bear at least one cup of nuts?’
“He fixed his eyes directly on my face with no particular point of focus, but with a gaze that took in the totality of my features. Finally, he said, ‘These small trees are cheaper and I have very little money.’
‘So you do not expect to live to see the trees reach sufficient maturity to bear fruit?’
“‘No, but is that important? All my life I have eaten fruit from trees that I did not plant. Why should I not plant trees to bear fruit for those who may enjoy them long after I am gone? Besides the person who plants to reap the harvest has no faith in life.’”
That’s a great story. But having faith in life is hard sometimes. We are from time to time battered and beaten - with physical ailments, with emotional turmoil, with spiritual dilemmas. And when I look around me in the world, I see that if we are but guests, it is also a sad reality that we treat each other as enemies.
Thomas Hobbes once said “The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone . . . the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. ” Indeed. With the news of death and terror and hunger and genocide and fear inundating us every day, my love affair with the miracle of life is too often challenged. My hope is severely tested.
Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says we are all addicted to hope, and we have to understand that there is no hope, there is no place to hide. She suggests putting the stricture “Abandon Hope” on the door of your fridge, as opposed to “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.” Get real. To abandon hope is the relinquishment—the letting go, the surrender—that is necessary for the spiritual journey. Relinquish? Surrender? These are not easy words for most of us.
Chodron says, and I agree with her, that all our hope and therefore all our anxiety are rooted in the fear of death. I would add that they are rooted the fear of our capacity to destroy ourselves. We can accomplish great things in this world, and we can also destroy this world. We live within that tension everyday. As one Zen master said, “Life is like getting into a boat that’s just about to sail out to sea and sink.” I hate how realistic these Buddhist folks are. Can’t they leave me a little comfort, a little denial? It appears not.
Somehow we never think we are going to die. Well, we know this intellectually, but to really internalize that truth, to grasp that existential reality, is beyond most of us. Death will come to others, but not to me. Death will come, but not now—always later. It’s like the woman who said to her spouse, “Dear, if one of us should die first, I think I’ll go and live in Paris.”
It takes a leap of faith sometimes to say “thank you” instead of “please.” But as we probe deeper into our souls, as we plunge deeper into the great mystery of things, there comes a dawning that, in the end, all is well, and we are grateful.
As the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote,
“Between life and death there must somewhere be a harmony;
Otherwise the world could not have borne it through the ages,
Smiling such a cruel deceit, and all the lights of her stars would have darkened.”
My glorious family vacation in the sublime climes of the Caribbean reminded me that I have only one life to live. I live it in a vast cosmic drama. It also reminded me how fortunate I am to live where I live and to have what I have—freedom, material comfort, and even security—when compared to the poverty, disease and tyranny that afflicts millions of other fellow guests.
However, we needn’t speak only in grandiose language. In the words of Alice Walker: “Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.” But I also often feel guilty that I can enjoy those peaches—that I can even pick them– in relative peace.
Nevertheless, I can still say, that ultimately, life is good. Yes, death happens. It is a part of life. We die in the middle of things, but in that interval between beginning and ending we forge our meanings or find them in the stars. It is ironic that our meanings may never be known until life is done.
Returning home from Honduras, as I pondered all these feelings stirring inside of me, and still basking in the miracle of life, I recalled the prayer-poem by Unitarian poet e.e. cummings. Understanding his God-talk as poetry of the soul, I can still say exuberantly:
I thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
CLOSING MEDITATION:
Life is a gift. You did not earn it.
You are part of a great miracle.
You are a bit player in the cosmic drama, if only for a brief time.
Be grateful.
Savor the gift, but also nurture it and help save the miracle for others.
As a guest of existence, that is your duty.
You are a part of what is.
So may you learn to be present with the moments you have been given,
And, out of this presence, may you grow in love and in compassion. Amen.