LIFE’S UNDERTAKINGS SHARING SACRED Friends who identify more as spiritual than religious often refer to life and living as a kind of earthly school.
perpetrators and predators includes men and women of the Church in roles and robes of teachers.
For the majority of people following a spiritual path, destiny follows a trajectory; a mysterious pre-life of agreed-upon sacred contracts and teachings.
Forgive me. I realize my mood feels dark, especially when the sun is shining down on a summer promise of more freedoms. But when your life’s vocation unfolds in what industry experts call “death care” (true, not our best word play), I can’t help but look to dark seasons.
Of course, to keep things interesting, the universe ensures we forget everything, including our life’s purpose and passion, so we’re born as fresh and free as a baby daisy. Once we’re here on Earth in our “skin suit” (some of my friends speak like honorary Californians so bear with me) the big stuff shows up fast; we start learning lessons within this giant, magnificent classroom called Life. As much as I appreciate spirituality, I am limited in how far I can lean into the idea that good things and bad things – I have seen many bad, sad, unfair things – are impersonal lesson delivered for the sake of teaching, showing and growing. My funeral staff and I regularly sit with families who’ve been victimized and traumatized by crime, cancer or awe-inspiring cruelty. Not once would we ever say, much less even contemplate, that a family’s suffering is part of a “lesson” or a dark curriculum assigned by the universe. But it’s not just spirituality’s borderline preachiness or lack of empathy that stops me from connecting with their way of interpreting the mysteries and unfairness of life. It’s that “Earth School” spiritualists offer up no classroom or graduation ceremony for life’s grandest and most life-altering lesson – death. (Yes, I do always end up writing about dying and death. I’m your local friendly funeral director!) To ignore or dismiss death is to ignore and dismiss life. We need look no further than into the most recent grisly headlines. The unmarked graves unearthed in Kamloops and Saskatchewan are ghastly and horrifying because children represent life – sacred life. People’s lives, irrespective of age, that end shamed, hidden and without mourning are atrocities. Take away all the media rhetoric, “woke” mob roars and political showboating, and you will hear generations of parents weeping. Those babies were school children. What “lessons” did they learn? Not one spiritual friend can tell me. And my religious faith is challenged when the large cast of historical
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Summer is followed by fall and then winter. Like you, I don’t know what the future holds, although I remain hopeful that from shock and atrocity we learn to listen to one another without narrative or agenda. Indigenous culture has a long and rich tradition of storytelling. Like school children, I hope we gather and sit down as a nation and truly listen to the stories demanding to be heard and honoured. Stories about the dead and from the dead have been held sacred in every civilization until this one. So often we coddle ourselves and others from the shadow and impact of death. We turn away from formal acts of mourning, we minimize grief’s transformative power or we scorn hosting anything signifying that we were here on this planet and now we are not. Our personal and cultural avoidance of death is juxtaposed by how the majority of us respond to dying and death when we have no skin in the game. Take, for example, how millions of people are still mourning and celebrating a princess they did not know. Today people around the world are honouring Princess Diana’s imaginary 60th birthday. She died at 36 more than 20 years ago. I don’t data dump those numbers in a cruel or disrespectful way. Yet contrasted by how often we don’t dare mention a deceased loved one’s name for fear of “upsetting” the grieving family, is it not mind-splitting to consider how we’re all still telling stories about Princess Diana? I see why: her life story and humanitarian deeds (and family tribulations) generate feelings of familiarity, unity, comfort and inspiration. Cannot each life then, no matter how small or short, do the same? Can we not all be enriched and expanded in our humanity by the sharing of life stories? And if stories heal and unite us, then why are we more comfortable mourning the famous than grieving the beloved? Neither spirituality nor religion can answer these questions for me. I’ve been banging around in
ETOBICOKE LAKESHORE PRESS
