Tag: death

Lost and Religious Mortality

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by S. Brent Plate:

“This is the end, my only friend the end . . . I’ll never look into your eyes again”

-Jim Morrison/ The Doors.

Along with 10-20 million others, I just left the island for good, saying goodbye to my friends who have occupied me for the past few years: the scientists and skeptics, the faithful and flaky, those motivated by riches, those by redemption, those by reincarnation. “I had not thought death had undone so many,” said T.S. Eliot in “The Wasteland.” But what does death undo and redo?

There’ll be plenty in the news about the fallout, the end, but here is one thing that won’t be much mentioned in the mainstream press: Everyone needs help. Everyone needs someone else. Everyone dies. Even the heroes are not told “you are one of a kind,” but rather, “Now you’re like me.” To be special means you take your place in line among others: adoptive mothers, friends, and comrades. You are one of many, which doesn’t diminish their responsibilities. Continue Reading →

Infinite Details

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When my tender soul was saved dozens of years ago at Circle K camp in the rolling river hills of summertime Pennsylvania, it wasn’t from fear of death or need for unconditional love but for humble credit of another’s craft: the simple lines of a green and pliant pin oak leaf told me I best acknowledge the superior skills of God. The long, rambling, poetic essay Edward Hoagland writes for the May issue of Harper’s magazine isn’t so much nostalgic for an unspoiled natural world — Hoagland’s old; he’s written 20 books, contributed to Harper’s since the 70s and achieved that many years — as prophetic: God’s Green Earth is receding; that means something bad for not only human existence but for human spirit. Of course Hoagland’s thankfully too smart to assess spirits; he’s refreshingly more interested in accounting. In the midst of auditing natural beauty and wonder — from Route 66 to African wildlife reserves, from aphids to elephants — he gives us a rundown of what nature’s lost in the past handful of decades, his decades. And he webs those natural losses to a larger consideration, particularly on the minds of those wrinkled, accustomed to grief, and weak in the knee: What does this loss of nature mean? Continue Reading →