Death

I decided to pull out some Tarot cards today, and the first card was Death.

Don't worry, it's just a metaphor. And a pretty accurate one too. A lot of things are changing right now and a period of my life is ending. I'm in the middle of figuring out what the next stage of my life is going to be like. And before anything new can happen, the old has to become old. It has to die. Only with death can there be birth; only with birth can there be death.

Death is not an evil thing, nor always bad, but it is often scary, and sometimes painful. We become comfortable in the life we have and start to fear that it won't always be so comfortable, that at some point something will be different. Fear of death is fear of change, for death is the first step to change. I mostly mean metaphorical death here, as in ending, leaving, or being destroyed, but physical death too. Physical death is the ultimate change from which there is no changing back (in so far as anything can really be changed back). But we forget we have already gone through such a transition: birth. We come into this world and we go out, there is no escaping this truth, for the nature of life is change. Creation and destruction are the two sides of that change and merely different ways of describing a single event.

I was at a funeral recently and as I listened to the pastor, I became convinced that the nature of religion is to address in some way the fear of death. And in my opinion, most do this the completely wrong way, which is to get rid of death entirely. When you die you go to heaven. Death is not real, you won't really die, the people you love won't die, everything will be perfect in the light of God. "Others have to say 'goodbye', we get to say, 'see you later'." To me that means no growth can occur, no moving forward but always looking back - eternal stagnation and sameness - the absence of change and so the absence of life. The absence of life indeed - the very thing that was feared - but also the absence of death. What is left? No, I would rather say goodbye. I would rather be able to feel loss and sadness and pain. How can one grieve if there is nothing to grieve? How can I rejoice in the new if I never let go of the old?

I don't mean to be too hard on the idea of heaven, though. I don't mind if people believe in what gives them comfort, and I don't mind interpreting heaven as a metaphor even though people take it literally. ;-) But I will continue to say goodbye. And hello! (FYI that means to babies, in this analogy.)

One of my favorite movies is The Fountain and its major theme happens to be death. As the husband struggles to cure his dying wife, he spends less time with her. By trying to have her forever, he loses her now. And the wife instead becomes fascinated with the story of the Mayan creator god, who plants the tree of life from his own dying body: "Death as an act of creation." "Death is the road to awe." (One could say, the road to "awesome!" But one wouldn't.) And in the picture on the Tarot card, the dead one is placed in the fetal position in the womb of the earth. The snake sheds its skin to permit new growth. Or, to put it a little grossly, phallic and wombic imagery come together to create new life. (They make baby imagery.)

Having said all that, I'm not looking forward to my own metaphorical death at all! But I have to remind myself that Fear won't help anything... and then I have to eat some chocolate and calm down.

P.S. Almost forgot to mention another thing about The Fountain. I remember thinking the credits looked a bit like cosmological structure formation, but I didn't take it quite this far. Pretty awesome.