2017.04.16 Easter Morning: Choose Life!

Easter Morning
    by William Stafford.

Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
"Repent," and you say, "Come on in," and it's
Jesus. That's when all you ever did, or said,
or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
sings out, "I'm still here," and you know it's true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing
there suddenly brought to account: saved.

Except, maybe that someone says, "I've got a deal
for you." And you listen because that's how
you're trained––they told you, "Always hear both sides."
So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
Hell, which is what you're getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I'd say always go to
the door; yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
and say carefully, “Jesus?”


A friend of mine, some years ago, opened his door on a Sunday morning to face a young man standing there holding up a Bible and his pointer finger, saying: “Repent!” My friend was suffering the pain of a serious hangover and was horrified. He slammed the door in the man’s face, and then made jokes about it for a few years, most of them mocking this stupid Bible-thumper. In time, my friend did “repent” in the way he needed to. He stopped drinking and joined AA.

The poet who wrote about Easter morning is William Stafford (1914-1993). He was poet laureate of both Oregon and the United States. He wrote relentlessly honest notes, in part gleaned from his own experience as a conscientious objector in WWII. During that war, Stafford worked in Civilian Public Service camps in several states. He wrote and spoke quietly about the sanity of nonviolence and the madness of violence. He did not fight for the sake of his country, as everyone thought was the highest value. He chose not to fight—for the sake of his country.

Personally, I think the choice NOT to fight for the sake of his country was a courageous one. What could happen if everyone in the world chose likewise? Seems like kind of an Easter choice to me.

Who knows how and when, or exactly why, our choices are made? Yet make them we do. In the Book of Deuteronomy the voice of God speaks to the people of Israel, saying: “See, I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. . . ” (30:19)  I often remind myself: Choose life!

Every small choice, for better or worse, counts. Here’s one………

The Squirrel
    by Brian Doyle

Here you go. Here’s a moment to ponder carefully.
We think that there are greater and lesser moments
But how immensely and ridiculously wrong this is.
For here is a boy riding along the street in summer.
He is perhaps six years old. His bike is wildly blue.
He sees a smear of squirrel in the street. He pauses,
Using the heels of his sneakers as brakes. He looks,
He dismounts, he sets his kickstand, he looks down.
He kneels and gathers up the shredded creature and
Walks to the shady ravine where we saw the coyote
That time and he gives the squirrel to the tiny creek.
He washes in a muddy puddle and then he rides off.
I am the man who saw and testifieth of these things,
And what I say is true. I saw a boy bow before holy
Things, for all things are holy, and he reminded me,
And so now I remind you. Go thou and do likewise.

New Year. New Resolve. Choose Life

Bare bones life itself can be terrifying—bad enough to die for, good enough to choose.

Martha Mason spent her life of sixty-one years in an iron lung. Stricken with polio in 1948 at age eleven, Mason, who had watched her brother die from the same disease, decided to outrun it. She was confined to an iron lung and given a grim one year’s prognosis.

The disease captured her entire body, turned her into a quadriplegic, confined her to a draconian contraption that looked like a rocket ship going nowhere, outfitted with pumps that inflated and deflated the lungs keeping her alive—after a fashion— and seemingly defeating the child’s decision to outrun this affliction.

I saw one of those full body tubes when I was about eleven. All you are is a head sticking out forced through a tightly sealed hole for your neck, worse than the snuggest of turtlenecks. I saw a young boy, Robin, a bit older than myself, the son of friends of my parents, in an iron lung. I had thought lungs were small but his substitute lung was monstrous. I didn’t know Robin well but ever since I saw him trapped in there with only his small frightened white face showing I have lived with a fear of being squished alive. Breathing though vital isn’t all there is.

Robin died. I was relieved thinking him better off but also glad I didn’t have to see that sight again. But it lingered in my dreams and even now is easy to conjure.

Would I have the fortitude, the cool to choose life under these circumstances? How would God be in this with me? I’d rather be crucified—I think.

But Martha Mason could talk, think, love, eat and read. She had a mother who stayed by her side, a college degree honestly earned, and friends who enjoyed her mummy-like company.

Reading about her recently in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine (112/27/09) evoked terror and admiration for this woman’s spirit so dramatically in love with bare bones life that she chose it.

Besides her inside and outside gifts, she had an unexpected grace left to her she pretended by her dead brother. It was a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations.” In it she read this life-choosing, life-saving thought: “Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”

It would be easy to chalk this wise thought off to the stereotype of stoicism—lots of denial and no fun.

Marcus Aurelius was a second century Roman Emperor, a good one in fact, and also a Stoic philosopher who proposed a government of duty and service. He also thought that every human being could participate in the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil though they often were unable to tell the one from the other. He wrote that all partake of this same mind and all possess a share of the divine.

This attitude, not of glib positivity fueled by denial but of wise appreciation for the mixture of life’s circumstances and choices, distinguished this thinker. It isn’t so much about stop your whining, suffer in silence as it is about choosing to embrace the life you have after you have grieved not having the life you want, and to do so with humbleness of heart and valor of spirit.

The Old Testament writer of Deuteronomy put similar words into the mouth of God: “See, I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live . . .” (Deut. 30:19 paraphrase)

In 2010, resolve to choose life!