Death's Dark Door: Where is Your Sting?

Anyway! Death gets my attention. You, also? The mystery of death surround us. It does. Drinking of the cup of dying and death demands staring death's dark, murky and mortal wound. Anyway! Drink deeply! Befriend death. Be a friend of death in a culture - that which we inhabit - that is "contra" - against life unlike my uncle Chester, a fruitful, faithful farmer who sowed seeds, nurtured them, fertilized them, and grew them with God into deeper, fuller, firmer life, indeed! Could Chet drink of the cup? Did he know what he was asking when, I imagine, he wanted to be at the left or the right of the Lord of Life? Do you know? Do I? His story - like our own - is full of mystery, even contradiction, and, contra - against - Life - your own and mine, maybe? So, we drink deeply of the cup? We can, no? Will you? Will I? We drink and inebriate on the cup of blessing? A good sip of the cup. The Body and Blood of Christ soaked in the Word of God - the living...always was always will Be Body of Christ. In the travail of life, the desolation/consolation, and roller-coaster-like ride of ups and downs of life's brief trek, like a blade of grass as the psalm writer notes, however, like the aroma of a rose we are called to be by Saint Paul, confront and face the predicaments and mysteries of living life well today: WE DON'T GET EVERYTHING WE WANT WE WIN SOME AND LOSE SOME WE MAY BE REJECTED BY A FIRST, OR, SECOND LOVE WE MAY GET SICK PASSED OVER FOR A PROMOTION AND, WE WILL DIE IN THESE MORTAL BODIES MARKED WITH THE CREMENS AND ASHES OF THE DEATH WE STARE IN THE FACE THIS DAY. We will. Don't die, then, LIVE! AND, don't die before your time, or, don't let anytime rob you of moments of living, breathing and being....in a contraceptive culture that wants to manage-care dying and death on someone else's terms - beyond the pro-life Maker God who made me, you, more! Be sure you have someone to sit at your bedside when your final moments fade and your candlelight flickers in the wind... Befriend death....and, life moreso...now, this day, here and now, all the way to heaven as Hildegard of Bingen said...heaven is heaven all the way to heaven UNLESS YOU HAVE EOTHER PLANS. Trust God, trust me, YOU CAN LIVE! Live! Don't die! Drink deeply of the cup and soak in it's pain and promise all way through the aches and heartaches by the number. Anyway!