Wake-Up Call

Sunset Last Night

Imagine attending each moment, as if looking back from beyond, clenched from after-death, certain this “now” is the last, the perfection; imagine the shaking free, like a golden retriever with an over-wet stick fetched from the river of life. 

“But if you escape from these dark places

And come to rebehold the beautiful stars…

The presence of the divine does not lead to contempt for the world. The divine is understood, essentially, as the end (or the destination) of everything. And the things that have been lost, the things one knows one must lose, the friends, the houses: all of it is loved all the more intensely. Death exists in order to stamp out the satisfaction of possession, which debases things. 

   (p. 257 in Notes, The Unforgiveable and Other Writings by Christina Campo, translated by Alex Andriesse and introduction by Kathryn Davis).

“Campo was born with a congenital cardiac malformation, the very condition she claims caused her to be thrown into the ‘thick of [her] own destiny,’ her deformity elevated into an unusual kind of power, the ‘ability to penetrate impenetrable places.’” (Davis, Introduction, p. viii) 

Imagine holding the presence of death, head-on, eyes wide-open, possessions cast-off, and thereby living free of distractions with intensity through this heightened sense of destiny! The key possession: keen focus, alert for the golden gate confronting any who dare to see, who dare to enter the divine which may never be undone. 

Else the fear of death goes slaying, at least wounding life, stripping off awareness, then high-gloss lacquering over deep-knowing, alike crimson lipstick depriving true taste, faking ecstasy. Like choosing Solomon’s half-child instead of cohabiting loss. Go not unconscious into the last night; take not hand with death-fear. Shake free that shadow. Choose the dance. 

Antonio Machado put it best: “All Jesus’ words are one word: ‘Wake-Up!’” (As remembered from Robert Bly’s translation in Times Alone.) 

Also coming to mind from well over fifty years ago: Mom’s attempt to get her children ready for the school bus, best sung off-key: “Wake with the buttercup! Come on, Get up, GET UP. Rise with the sun. No more sleepy head. Time—Get-Out-of-Bed! [Or, if you must, try youtube’s Kate Smith - Here Comes the Sun (1930) (with lyrics).]

On a similar note, Douglas Christie tells of Thomas Merton’s late stage of life:

Merton was seeking not so much a new or different place (at least not for its own sake) as a renewed sense of his own deepest center… it was the interior change that mattered most… centering upon the elusive but necessary task of clarifying and deepening his quest for God.” 

(pp. 134-5 in The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology)

Death is just a wake-up call from God. 

Today's Sunrise