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Contemplating Death While Creating Life
This week I nearly lost a family member, albeit a four-legged one.
And in the midst of dealing with urgent care doctors, IVs and
exorbitant bills, I shed a lot of tears and thought a lot about the end
of life…how quickly it arises and how little control we actually have
over it.
At four months pregnant, the last thing I imagined being preoccupied
with while creating life was death. But it keeps coming up again and
again. This little person in my womb, barely 5 inches long now, will
die someday (hopefully long after me). Perhaps it seems strange to be
thinking about my baby’s death, when it has not yet had its birth, but
I feel it is important.
I like to picture myself becoming a non-controlling mother, one who
allows her child to roam free, realizing their dreams uninhibited by my
fears and expectations. But my fierce instinct to keep our cat alive
this week and my fears of letting him leave the house (now that he is
home recovering) have brought to light just how difficult this state of
motherhood may be.
How do we balance our parental instinct to protect and nurture with
the tendency to become overprotective, fear-based parents who raise
fearful, reticent children?
In these moments, I think of my mother and all that I have put her through, testing the limits of her sanity (you too dad!).
When I was 18, I entered my first war zone in Cambodia and ventured
far West into the territory of the brutal Khmer Rouge Dictator Pol
Pot…just to see what I could see. When I emerged unharmed a week later
in Vietnam, I forgot to call home on the agreed upon date and my poor
mom spent several days distraught, waiting by the phone, refusing to
leave the house (at that time we had no e-mail, no Facebook, just
expensive calling booths).
When I was 30, I was arrested by the Chinese Military for staging a
Free Tibet protest at Mount Everest and subsequently disappeared for
three days before any government could confirm I was still alive. And
believe me, in the twelve years between those two events I gave my
mom’s heart several reasons to stop beating. At the time, I thought
little of it.
Now, on the precipice of becoming a mother myself, I often wonder
how she handled it all? The only thing I can come up with is that she
spent a lot of time contemplating death and becoming friends with
it…hers and mine. An avid meditation practitioner, she set me loose
upon the world, working through her fears and desires to control me and
refused to stand in the way of my path.
When we try to control life and pretend that death is not awaiting
us, then we exist in an illusory world of make believe, convincing
ourselves that everything is safe and predictable. Then, when the
reality of death does strike, it is much more brutal and unfamiliar and
we are that much more unprepared. But we all know that there is no
avoiding death, no matter how safe we feel, no matter how much
insurance we purchase. As we saw last month in Haiti, and as I
witnessed over and over again in my years working in war zones,
disaster can strike anytime and our only weapon against it is to know
it, to expect it, to befriend it.
There is a Buddhist saying that goes, “Death comes without warning,
this body will be a corpse…at that time the Dharma is my only help, I
shall practice it with exertion.”
Or as the poet Mary Oliver puts it, “when death comes, like an
iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door
full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage
of darkness?”So as an expecting mom, one who wants my kid to grow up fearless and
believing they can accomplish anything, I am already practicing by
contemplating my unborn child’s death and coming to terms with it.For many, contemplating death is considered morbid and to be avoided. But for me, embracing death is the only way to live.
Truthfully,
Kiri Westby Change-maker/Rule-Breaker/Story-teller, Kiri Westby, is a featured
contributor to Ed and Deb Shapiro’s new book, BE THE CHANGE, How
Meditation Can Transform You And The World, with forewords by HH Dalai
Lama and Robert Thurman.
https://www.care2.com/greenliving/contemplating-death-while-creating-life.html?&page=2
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Belief...I rise out of the old and into the new.
Ash
Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season. It affords us an
opportunity to turn away from beliefs that limit or bind us. Some think
of this time as a period of fasting from special foods or outer
pleasures. Others believe it is a time to give up certain states of
mind, certain words and ways that are not in keeping with the Jesus
Christ ideal.
No matter how we may choose to keep Lent, let us
turn our eyes from the darkness to the light, our ears from strife to
peace, our words from negative to positive, and our hands from
destruction to construction. Keeping Lent in this way will prepare us
mentally, physically and spiritually to rise out of the old and into
the new.
--Adapted from Daily Word, February 11, 1959
Is not this the fast that I choose?--Isaiah 58:6
https://www.dailyword.com/
February 17 - April 3 - Lent
February 17 - Ash Wednesday
February 17 - Ash Wednesday
Genesis 3:19 (NIV)
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."