Easter Sunday

Saturday March 26, 2005

“Dashing Through Life”... Without the Proper Garments

“Beneath the restlessness with what is
And the yearning for what could be,
Lies a life aching to be born.
But often locked in a tension
Created by the world’s incessant shout
And the Spirit’s gentle whisper,
he human drive and the Divine call,
We languish in our pain
Until we find the courage to respond
Or die, never knowing who we are.”
+Deacon John P. Moran, 1994

The author of those words thought he was a man in search of himself but in his midlife journey he discovered that his search was for the God he thought he had known all his life.

He authored a book entitled “Living Our Life Story — Spiritual Transformation in a Turbulent World.” It’s a book, I suppose, that any one of us could have written. Well, not everyone, but who among us has never said, “Some day I’m going to write a book!” If the truth be known, our motivation is mixed at best. Having reached a comfort zone, we may want nothing more than to tell others how we got here. We know that no comfort is lasting but perhaps our writing about it can make it last and in the process, bring joy to others or at least the hope that with perseverance others can come to know the peace that comes with contentment despite the turbulence that surrounds us.

That’s exactly what my deacon friend John did. I don’t know how many copies he sold. I suspect that the book didn’t break any records and more than likely didn’t even make it to a second printing.

In the very first chapter entitled, “The Dash,” John tells the story of “an elderly preacher who mounted his pulpit in his pristine church in New England, looked out over his small congregation and began to speak in a slow, measured cadence.

”‘My dear brothers and sisters, this morning, I would like to talk to you about the dash.’

“As he paused to gather his thoughts, his congregation glanced at one another, perhaps thinking the old man had been dipping into the sauce once again or had finally gone over the edge.

”‘The other evening after dinner,’ he continued, ‘I took a stroll through our church yard out back. Now I do this often but the other evening I paused at the headstone of Nathaniel R. McCoy and I got to thinking. All that I, or anyone else in these parts for that matter, know about old Nate is what his headstone tells us:

Nathaniel R. McCoy
August 1, 1801 – October 4, 1867

“It doesn’t tell us if he was tall or short, rich or poor, handsome or homely, doctor or drifter, or whether he lived in a cottage or a castle. All that any of us know about Mr. McCoy is that he lived on this earth for three score and six.

“What’s intriguing about Mr. McCoy’s headstone, and all the other headstones in our church yard is that while all the names and dates are different, they all hold something in common. They all have a small dash between the date of birth and the date of death. Interesting, isn’t it, that the only significant information about our lives people see fit to place upon our headstones at the time of our passing are our names, the dates of our arrival and the date of our departure from this earth? Everything that transpires in between is symbolized by a dash, a small, three-quarter inch line.

”‘As I looked at Nate’s headstone,’ the preacher went on, ‘and reflected upon our lives today, what I found so intriguing is the amount of time and energy many of us invest seeking to impress other people, trying to live up to their expectations. This is often done at the expense of our own convictions; all in the hope of being respected in the present and being remembered in the future.’

“Now that’s something that offers all of us some food for thought, he said, especially when we stop to consider that God did not place us on this earth to live up to anyone expectations but his, and his expectations are ultimately revealed in the heart of who we are. We need only listen to our own hearts for what we are called to be in life.

“When our hearts and minds are in harmony with God’s spirit within us, we are never deceived. It is only when we choose to ignore the compelling messages of our hearts and minds, allowing the emotion of the moment or the controlling words of others to influence our thoughts, feelings and actions that we deceive ourselves.

”‘So,’ he continued, ‘we all need to give more serious thought to the significance of the dash.’ In a real sense it’s the line that counts — the real bottom line.

Surrounded by his grown children, John died unexpectedly less than six months ago not far from Weston Priory where he embarked upon his search many years ago after a failed marriage, a failure for which he was in large measure responsible. He traveled west searching for himself and in the process ultimately found God – the God he thought he had known all his life. It was too late to redeem his marriage but it was not too late to redeem his soul.

As with many of us, in his search for Jesus, John was afraid to embrace the reality of the empty tomb preferring instead to search for the risen Christ. Missing the opportunity to put on the garments left by the master in the empty tomb, like Mary, Peter and John, he went in search of a miracle. He did not understand that the resurrection had more to do with living on in Jesus name, doing the things that Jesus did in Galilee and Nazareth and Capernaum and Jerusalem.

Easter is not a just a one-time event but a life-changing reality and the will to go on living in such a way that the Godforsaken will understand that they are not abandoned as long as you and I have a heart to care and a hand to help.

In the words of Joan Chittister, let’s put on ‘the left-over garments’ and dash into the reality of the present moment with the Beatitudes as our guide and grace of the Holy Spirit as our driving force.

If God is truly in our hearts then Jesus is truly risen and his dazzling light will shine through you and me and we will not succumb to the darkness of anger, hate and despair in the face of injustice but will rise to the demands of true Christian love and compassion which can’t help redound to virtue in this life and glory in the life to come.

“What lies behind us
and what lives before us
are tiny matters
compared to what lies within us.” ___ Today! Anon

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