A messenger of joy

“I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve?”

These words of Bahá'u'lláh have been a challenge and a mystery to me for over 40 years, since I first learned committed myself to the Bahá'í Faith. There was no joy in death as it was understood in my childhood home and early religious education. Death was a punishment, or an injustice, or just simply an end. Judaism, as I was taught it, did not include a view of life continuing beyond earthly bounds.

And I was just plain scared of death. Felt trapped, unfairly given a life that was destined to be snatched away and completely erased, more completely than the pencil marks in my sketches when I rubbed out wayward lines to replace them with more exacting ones. Those lines at least left a faint trace of themselves on the paper. My life would simply disappear, as if it had never happened.

But my contact with the Bahá'í Faith gave me a new understanding of death as a transition from the training wheels phase of life to a continuing, progressing, eternal existence. Eternal. That was the sticking point. My dread, my outright panic at times, transferred itself from fear of endings to fear of forever.

And I still felt trapped, by a fate over which I had no control, no choice.

But I believe that Bahá'u'lláh’s words are true, that they are directly channeled to us by a loving Creator, so my challenge was rely on prayer and meditation to accept death as a “messenger of joy,” and actually become joyful about it.

It’s been a long journey. I’m much farther along the way. There have been moments when I have felt almost there, and the peacefulness of those moments call for more.

It’s not surprising that my period of greatest serenity about death came during the time, starting three years ago this month, that I was dealing with cancer diagnosis and treatment, and with the uncertainty of outcome. Most people tried to be helpful by talking about cancer as if it were a sports event. I was counseled to beat it, fight it, was assured that I would win, with winning was defined as staying alive.

Did that mean that if I died, if the cancer “won,” I would “lose”? Did it mean that death was synonymous with defeat? Such a view didn’t gibe well with the image of death as “a messenger of joy.”

I thought a lot about the fact that death is not an “if”, it’s a “when.” I will die, someday, that was a given. Did it matter that much whether it was now or later? Logically I couldn’t see that it did.

So I could not then and cannot now accept the idea that if I, or anyone, dies from cancer or any other disease, they have lost a battle. Serenity during that time of living in cancer-world came from accepting that, while of course I would do whatever was necessary to get healthy and stay healthy, any result, any outcome, would be OK. More than OK. It would be a positive good.

It’s been a greater challenge to hang on to that serenity about death since I’ve been able to get off the sofa and have an active life again. But in a few days I have an appointment with my oncologist, a routine three-month check-up, and every time one of these appointments nears, I wonder if this will be the one where I learn the cancer has returned. And every time I have to remember the lessons cancer has taught me.

This week, with my upcoming appointment plus all the news about the devastation in Haiti and the trial initiated against the seven Bahá'ís in Iran who are accused of non-sensical and vague capital crimes, I am more aware than ever that death is inevitable, and that it will come on its own schedule, with or without warning.

And that my job – everyone’s job, regardless of their specific beliefs about death – is to be ready for it at every moment of life. Not in a morbid way. Just accepting it. And accepting the “when” of it. Because, as the well-known Alcoholics Anonymous prayer tells us, serenity comes from knowing what we can control and what we cannot control, and from putting our energies into the former rather than the latter.

It seems to me that in today’s world, the manner and timing of our deaths are more and more out of our control. I hear the rumblings of what is coming as the world collapses in upon itself, as the spiritually bankrupt structure of society as a whole implodes from lack of solid support.

It’s not the earthquake that is the disaster in Haiti, it’s the racism and materialism that created a poverty which failed to provide buildings that could stand during an earthquake.

It wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that washed out New Orleans, it was the racism and materialism that created its poor capacity to withstand a major hurricane.

And far too many people die not from disease but from the treatment of disease, treatments and drugs and procedures that often exist to serve stockholders as much, sometimes more, than patients.

Everywhere in the world I see disunity and injustice stemming from racism and materialism, from a lack of real and active faith in God, a lack demonstrated by the self-serving practices of business and government and in the everyday lives of everyday people. I see how we have created a modern Tower of Babel: too high, too weak, too poorly constructed and managed to stand

Bahá'u'lláh talked about the twin processes of destruction and construction that would lead us to a world based on justice and love. Many of us will be caught, often without warning, in the first process, even many individuals who are committed to groups and projects and goals that serve the second.

Since I don’t know what will happen to me or my family, to my friends, to my community; since my limited vision can’t see whether specific events are “good” or “bad” in the overall scheme, both personal and universal; since the only things I can control are my actions and my attitude, I choose joy. Acceptance. Serenity.

And hopefully, whenever it comes, death.

-30-