Talking Tuesday: The Wildness of Death

My heart is heavy today for a friend and the terrible loss she is going through once more.  I read this short piece in The Week a while back and thought it appropriate to the day.  I would say, however, for us who have the hope of heaven, death has no victory, no sting.  We can take comfort in the promise of our Risen Lord, and we are sent a Comforter in the Holy Spirit, celebrated this Pentecost past.   We may still beat our breasts in sorrow and anguish, and feel the agony of separation, but we still have hope in the Resurrection.

"Death may be the wildest thing of all, the least tamed or known phenomenon our consciousness has to reckon with.  I don't understand how to meet it, not yet, maybe never....Facing death in a death-phobic culture is lonely....We have no dominion over the wild darkness that surrounds us.  It is everywhere, under our feet, in the air we breathe, but we know nothing of it.  We know more about the universe and the mind of an octopus than we do about death's true nature.  Only that it is terrible and inescapable, and it is wild."

"Into the Wild Darkness", The Last Word, The Week, May 23, 2014, pg. 40-41.