Suffering:
In so many cases, the question ?why is there so much suffering?? is incredibly difficult to address. We could do better asking the following:

How can I live in such a way that this suffering becomes a source of life?
How can I love this person in their fragility, in their time of need?
How can I help them to see that they are beloved and precious?
How can life spring from disaster?

Look at suffering through the lens of the boundaries we have created. Remember we are not confined to this dividedness. We can choose to walk across the street, to blur the line, and to step over the boundary in order to meet the other. Remember, Jesus steps over many different boundaries. He pretty much was a boundary breaker.

Evil:
So we cannot say where evil came from or why there is evil in the world. The important things is to be aware that some kind of evil spirit does seem to exist. I don?t mean that there is a devilish-looking fellow creeping about, ready to spring from under the stairs or a closed door. I am talking about a way of being, about an evil that we all too easily become part of. It is all too easy to plant seeds of hatred, greed, and judgment. It happens quite unconsciously! When we are repulsed by evil to the point that we must turn away and pretend we never saw anything, we allow a division to form within us. How subtly evil works! In protecting ourselves, in turning away, in failing to witness to life, we become complicit in evil.

?Sarayu turned to Mack; at least that was his impression. ?Mackenzie, evil is a word that we use to describe the absence of Good, just as we use the word darkness to describe the absence of Light or death to describe the absence of Life. Both evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have any actual existence. I am Light and I am Good. I am Love and there is no darkness in me. Light and Good actually exist. So, removing yourself from me will plunge you into darkness. Declaring independence will result in evil because apart from me, you can only draw upon yourself. That is death because you have separated yourself from me: Life (pg. 136).?

And this is what it means to grow in our humanity. It means to grow in our capacity to forgive and welcome those who seem so far from us, so difficult to love. This is essential for overcoming divisions. It is by simple reverence and forgiving growth in love that evil is overcome.

Love:
?Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant?or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;?it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.?It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.?

If we start by saying that nature of love is that first meeting between the mother and child. It is a physical meeting through touch, body, eyes, smile, tears, laughter. In those early moments, a child discovers that he or she is loved. And because she is loved, she is someone. Love will always entail the eyes and the physical touch in some way. Love implies always speaking to the person behind the behavior, behind the capacity and knowledge. Behind the angers, fear, anguish, there is you! Love is not just a way of looking, it is also a way of listening, of being present, of understanding, of helping the other to change and to grow. This means that love implies humility. To love the child who is acting so aggravatingly or to love the grandparent that is always forgetting my name, demands some effort. To love someone who is not looking and is not paying attention, or to knock on door of someone we do not really want to see, is a challenge. Love is not about helping people to be the way that we want them to be or the way we think that they should be. Love is unconditional. Loves implies that we have the desire to help people to be fully themselves.

Love is?
The summary of the rest of the commandments.
The foundation for how we should treat others.
The mission for every church.
The filter for how we should see the world.
The framework for what we say and teach.
The blueprint for building our lives.
The reason Jesus came to sacrifice His life for us.

Loving God helps you love yourself. Loving God helps you love others. Loving yourself helps you love God. Loving yourself helps you love others. Loving others helps you love God. Loving others helps you love yourself.

Death:
He said, ?I remember the farmers going out onto the slopes when the snow was gone. They wore great packs of cow manure and they would spread it on the ground, like butter on toast. They did it with such delicacy and respect, confident in the new life that would spring up from this waste. This is the wonder of compost. In the movement of life, even death is not wasted. The scraps and peelings, the rotten fruits, the moldy bread, the parts of our food that in digestion have nothing more to offer our bodies in terms of energy or vitamins, the utter waste, gives life. Nothing is wasted?The mystery of compost should give us confidence to live experiences, to accept change, to risk loss and to be open to the movement of life. Today we have toilets. We send our garbage far away in great trucks. When we do something that is clearly wrong, we want to send it away to never see it, to forget about it. But the reality is that our growth comes from those experiences. We make mistakes, and we learn from them. We hurt others and we experience the wonderful gift of forgiveness, which can bring us into a deeper bonding with one another. When we have made a mistake, when we are living in a way that is not about growth, that is not about new life, we must have the confidence to leave this path. Then we must sort the rotten vegetables from the good and cut away the weeds, celebrating that the compost will bring nutrients to the new plants. Compost is internal to growth. Death is integral to life (Life?s Great Questions, pg 112-113).?

As I thought about this life and death piece, I was reminded of the writings from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She shares these words about the three stages of death. She says, ?the human body is identical to what happens when the butterfly emerges from its cocoon. The cocoon can be compared to the human body, but it is not identical with your real self for it is only a house to live in for a while. Dying is only moving from one house into a more beautiful one?As soon as the cocoon is in an irreparable condition?be it from suicide, murder, heart attack, or chronic disease, it doesn?t matter how it happened?it will release the butterfly, your soul so to speak. At this second stage, symbolically speaking, after the butterfly leaves its material body, you will experience some important things which you simply out to know in order not to be afraid of death anymore (On Life after Death, pg 3-4).?

Death is not the end of everything, for from the greatest of all composts, death, will arise a new life.

(*Wisdom, Communion, and Growth*)

And today, we are going to talk together about what matters in life and death.

What are your thoughts about what matters in life and death?

As I reflected on this, I kept coming to the image of giving birth to Emma.

As I thought through this, then
Wisdom-
Wisdom is not knowledge. It is a way of being, a way of searching for what is true and just in the world. It is about growing toward the origin and the fulfillment of all things, about growing in humility.

Wisdom 6:17: The beginning of wisdom?is the most sincere desire for instruction (Growth in wisdom begins with the acceptance of our poverty, the acceptance that we have much to learn.)

Wisdom 7:7-14 (Solomon?s Respect for Wisdom- Solomon describes his journey of growth in wisdom and that it began with an encounter, which inspired in him a profound humility and open generosity. He writes-)

⁷?Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me;
I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
⁸?I preferred her to sceptres and thrones,
and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her.
⁹?Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem,
because all gold is but a little sand in her sight,
and silver will be accounted as clay before her.
¹⁰?I loved her more than health and beauty,
and I chose to have her rather than light,
because her radiance never ceases.
¹¹?All good things came to me along with her,
and in her hands uncounted wealth.
¹²?I rejoiced in them all, because wisdom leads them;
but I did not know that she was their mother.
¹³?I learned without guile and I impart without grudging;
I do not hide her wealth,
¹⁴?for it is an unfailing treasure for mortals;
those who get it obtain friendship with God,
commended for the gifts that come from instruction.

Wisdom 7:25- (Wisdom is about openness to that which is over and above us, urging us to grow.) For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.

Wisdom 6:14- (Wisdom is to see that life is a journey, beginning with the discovery of wisdom ?sitting at the door, an encounter.) One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate.

What matters in life and in death is that we continue to live moments of rebirth, growing from our initial experience of belovedness toward our fulfillment. This is the journey to wisdom; this is the journey to oneness with God.

Communion-
Wisdom is about seeking communion with God.
We hear these words from John 1:1- ?In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.? The Word was in Communion with God, meaning that we have a mysterious experience of becoming one. Jesus invites us to be in communion with him, the Word made flesh. In John 17:23 shares these words: ?I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me,? that all may be gathered in communion with God, and then in communion with one another. Moments of communion give us a taste of what we are moving towards as we grow in love.

Communion is about mutual presence. It means I am with you, and you are with me. I am because I am with you, my deepest being is revealed because we are together. This requires humility and vulnerability, my sense of self fading into a reality of togetherness. Mutual presence is about allowing compassion to grow, revealing our radical togetherness. What does radical mean? It means ?root.? And so radical togetherness means that we are bound together in the roots of our humanity, growing to fulfillment. This journey begins with a moment, a taste of communion. We may have a moment of communion when we bear witness to something extraordinary and truthful, something that touches the depths of our hearts and awakens our longing for justice and peace. Communion is not something that we achieve or obtain, it is a moment on a journey that tells us we are moving in the right direction.

Yet, if we pursue division and barriers, when we get caught up in pursuing relationships with one another and the earth for reasons other than communion, we will find ourselves living in anguish. Anguish seems like a pretty strong word. It is the first great separation-the rupture of birth. Anguish is profound loneliness, is what animates our need to win, to be the best; it animates our compulsions. And this leads to addictions. Anguish and addiction prevent growth and loneliness leads to further suffering. If people get caught in the cycle of satisfaction from alcohol, drugs, sex, or even work, we will stifle our impulse to grow. Recovering from addiction is an extremely rigorous program of spiritual?indeed human?growth. I believe the 12 steps that are followed through AA and adapted in other recovery groups are wonderful for all people to adopt into their lives.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol?that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I believe these steps can resonate with all of us in how we let things go and grow on our journey, and how we decide to live our lives each day. These steps are relevant for everyone on a journey of and toward communion, which is liberation from anguish.

Athenagoras, Patriach of Constantinople wrote, ?I have waged this war against myself for many years. It was terrible. But now I am disarmed. I am no longer frightened of anything because love banishes fear. I am disarmed of the need to be right.?

He wrote that to be disarmed is no longer to have the need to be right, to disprove of others so as to justify one?s own argument, to always have more than others, or to possess everything. This is the journey to wisdom. It is about becoming free from fear so that we can listen to our inner voice, the presence of God within us. Growth in love is about accepting vulnerability and accepting reality. It is about forgiveness, fidelity, and helping others grow. And all of it is done in relationship with God, ?as we understood him.? It begins with an encounter, with the acceptance of our littleness and our need for relationship ?to restore our sanity,? which helps us to heal and grow.

We begin to address our anguish when we realize that fundamentally we are not alone. ?I knew a man struggling with alcoholism who had a grace-filled time of sobriety as he was caring for his cousin, who was also struggling with alcohol. When social services intervened and found a place for his cousin to go through rehab, this man went back to the bottle. He no longer had anyone to care for. We are beings in community. The treasure of our humanity, our belovedness, is revealed in our relationships with others and in our relationship with God, who says to us, ?You are my beloved in whom I am well-pleased (Mark 1:11).?

So what do we need to stay on a path of growth and a journey of living? What must we put in place so that we can be faithful on this journey to wisdom? The secret to this is time. The secret to growth is to take time, to take your time to be present and to wonder at the beauty of the universe, the beauty of all those around us, and to truly see the presence of God in all people.

I have been reading this book called ?The Year Without a Purchase: One Family?s Quest to Stop Shopping and Start Connecting? by Scott Dannemiller. In one chapter, he shares a story about going to India for a work trip. He is in the mall, because there isn?t anywhere else to hang out, and happens to be there during evening prayer time. All the business shut down during the prayer time. At the workshop the next day, he asked a woman named Latifah to help him understand the prayers during the day. Each prayer during the day has a difference significance. A regular focus on the divine and what is truly important.

Before sunrise- Fajr- Remembering God.
At noon-Dhuhr-Asking for guidance in your day.
Late afternoon- Asr- In the midst of daily stress. Pausing to remember God?s greater meaning in our lives.
Before dusk-Maghrib- Thankfulness for a day well-lived.
After dusk-Isha- Remembering God?s presence, mercy, and forgiveness.

The meaning behind the different prayer times was enlightening to me. And it caused me to think about the intentionality of the times of prayer and how these prayer movements to a place that truly matters in life and in death.