Last night I asked if “Am I Crazy”. A few friends wrote me insuring me that I was not crazy. That is good, but brings up another question: Am I Dead Yet?
Facing all the contradictions and paradoxes in daily life, the wide gap between what people say and what people do, makes me feel like I am dying. If that seems strange it is. Most of my life till recent years I feel that I was sleeping, alive but not awake. When I retired from working for employment, I kept working but now it was for what I wanted to do. It was freeing act that gradually open my eyes and ears to see and hear all the contradictions and paradoxes in life. Living with contradictions and paradoxes is not easy when you are awake.
I remember when at the beginning of the Iraq war a youth that I knew from youth ministry work was killed. The funeral liturgy was full of contradictions. Inside the church the memorial mass was solemn and sacred. However, at the end outside the Church doors that had been opened soldiers fire guns into the air in honor of my young friend. My young friend was a happy, go lucky teen and had a lot to live for. He entered the military for disciple, education or job experience? What he got was death in a war that should have never been.
When my son, who suffered a brain disease, died I really had to face death upfront and personal. At first I went on automatic pilot, ignoring my feelings of death and sorrow. When I woke up I felt the shadow of death around me and still do.
When one is awake, living with death, as it is in nature these early winter months, is natural. I know that I am not really dying but being awake and being ready to live life fully I know that I must face death daily. Like the winter season reminds us in Wisconsin there is no other way to live life without facing death. So I know I am not dead yet but the only way to live awake with contradictions and paradoxes is to face death each day till it comes.
With all this talk about being crazy and death, I feel that I am living too much in my head. So tomorrow I hope to turn my life and this posting back to observations of everyday life. Looking deeply into anything we can find life.
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