I then passed the beautifully landscaped gardens of Dignity Memorial Funeral Service (now Teague Funeral Service) on the far outskirts of town and had to pause and marvel over how much Life could be so beautifully tended in a place dedicated to death and dying. And then I realized that this is somehow fitting on some tangible higher plane of thought; that unfettered love allows life and death to become One even before one’s physical death accrues. For isn’t every act of selfless love a sacrifice of being for another? Isn’t every act of pure Love choosing to at least in some significant way die to self that another might better live?

“The hermit and the pilgrim both keep a window open onto the sky, without which their world would be in needless danger of perishing from suffocation or ugliness or boredom. Yes, it is true that as long as the hermit is caring for his animal cousins living nearby, and as long as the pilgrim is walking his road for Peace or Love or Justice, there can be no such death of Meaning or Joy. And yet in those moments when the two might slip or falter, the open window to the heavens allows for perspective to wash over them anew, and rekindle their remembered desire to live their lives with meaning-laden generosity. And these are the only ones, along with all the poets and activists, who still speak the language of the beyond, who still make existence itself into a sacred union, who give life a sense of celestial verticality without which humanity is all too easily buffeted about beneath itself. These are the ramparts against the banal assaults of mediocrity and appropriateness and normal and nastiness, all the hatred and prejudice and rationalized excess that are ever intolerant of their opposites. They are the force that warms the cultural atmosphere, that melts the social winters of the world. For those who have turned toward secondary things, their presence recalls the existence of the essential: the order of the world, verifiable knowledge, the priority of loving kindness & caring community, and the adoration of the ineffable and the Divine. Both model and prototype, both the hermit & the pilgrim represent, in a chaotic and dehumanized world, a final landmark, an ultimate axis for referencing a tangibly peaceful way of being. They allow man to remain standing by recalling the practicality of Oneness; a condition of harmony that, when deprived of its Totality, man tends to become totalitarian by compensation … The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a full lifetime, indeed the lifetime of an entire species. And we are all, even at this admittedly late hour, so incredibly close to mining whatever Grace and Beauty and Peace and Justice still remain on our horizon of possibilities. Let us journey there together … Let us set forth today.” ~ inspired by Jean Biès & Krista Tippett

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt