rot and decay - life and death

rot and decay

For the first time since November, we have been able to see the ground instead of snow. It seems that every January or late December we have a thaw, bringing temperatures up to the high of 0 -- 5 Celsius during the day. The warm temperatures accompanied by a few steady days of rain have melted the 25 cm of snow that still covered the earth. It looks like late-fall again, rather glum and dark.

Trying to make the best of it, I planted the last of our early tulip bulbs in the moist ground, as I hadn’t gotten to them before the first serious snow fell. That snow has been with us until now; this was a very good day to put those bulbs in, giving them enough time to be frosted before spring.
As I walked by our big stand of maple trees, I looked down to see the earth covered with its blanket of rotting leaves. It was a metaphor of decay, calling out to ponder on the question of ‘death’. It remains a mystery to me as I have yet to existentially cross that threshold.
I really must change my medications with all these moribund thoughts?

a carpet of decay

The Merriam Webster dictionary describes Death as:
1 : a permanent cessation of all vital functions : the end of life -- compare BRAIN DEATH
2 : the cause or occasion of loss of life
3 capitalized : the destroyer of life represented usually as a skeleton with a scythe
4 : the state of being dead :(
5 a : the passing or destruction of something inanimate (the death of modernism)

Wow that’s some serious shite. The “state of being dead” seems to be a permanent thing.
If you consider the cosmology of existence as presented by our current Cartesian thinkers and scientists, it seems that in our modern time the saying from “dust to dust” should be expressed as from “nothing to nothingness”. I think that their meaning of nothingness needs to be redefined. It was once described to me as: draw a circle and call what falls outside it ‘nothing’, death is the erasure of that circle. Complete and absolute nothingness.

life and death

The more I meditate on death the more I become convinced that it is an abnormality of existence. By that I don’t mean not part of existence but rather an aberration in it. Like knowing, something is wrong by seeing the “strings of code” float by on the monitor of the “Matrix” just after the “smith virus” starts to copy/multiply itself. It just doesn’t feel right to think the “circles erasure” is the culmination of life - nothingness. I won’t even go to the next logical plateau, predicated on the aforementioned premise and ask if this is death, what is the purpose of life. I think Sartre said it best in his book “Being and Nothingness”.

When I look out at the forest floor and I see the decaying leaves rotting in this damp of winter, I do not see signs of permanence. To the contrary, I see signs of a cycle of life. I believe that nature talks to us, pointing to underlying truths about the reality we all share in common.
When I visit the “corpus” of a deceased friend or family member, I get this overwhelming feeling that this is not a farewell. I see it more as the French do when they say “Adieu” (until we meet with God) instead of “salute” or goodbye.

It is all a theory because I have never met someone who was dead and rose again to tell me. By dead, I mean for a few days or psychical death. That said I find the outworking of how death is described by Saint Paul to make the most sense to me. Death is the result of sin and sin is an aberration in the matrix of life, otherwise put as “the fall brought by sin”.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,...

I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea that death is just another meaningless point in the life of organic matter. Using the “scientific methods model”, the very fact I cannot comprehend it must mean something. I am therefore I think, as opposed to I think I am therefore I am. I am assuming that we all agree that the purpose of life is not death; the purpose of life is love. Death continues to seem out of place.

I guess what I’m really saying is that life is the grandest and most treasured way of expressing love. Love of another, a vocation, expression, the means to achieve good for this “fallen world” through love.
Sin would be best described as “the seven deadly sins” 1. Greed 2. Gluttony 3. Envy 4. Sloth 5. Pride 6. Lust 7. Wrath; all of which do not in anyway root themselves in love -- except for maybe self-love which is an oxymoron, Narcissus says it better.

In taking Paul’s description of “death” and “life” as praxis, it changes the whole way which you view reality.

1 Corinthians 15: 54-56
54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."[a] 55"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"[b] 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Though death still has great fear with me, it is more a sign of my lack of faith than what I know I should trust. Death is an enemy and an abnormality in existence. It is the harvest of sin but not life. When I have these fears, like a mantra, I remind myself:
1 Corinthians 15: 24-26
24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Even walking amongst the stench and decay on the forest floor it speaks to me that:
2 Corinthians 2: 15-17
15For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?
2 Corinthians 4: 11-12
11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

As I look down, I am comforted to know that life is at work in me, suddenly all is right with the world or my frame of mind anyway.

This beautiful carpet of wet soggy leaves screams meaning at me as doe’s death; life is meaningful, as is death. I will always choose life.

Then I turned my head towards the Buddha and saw that the lichens, fungus and moss where happy. Then again, this Buddha always wears a smile in a way that ceramic things do. I left for the house seeing spirals of green and red and thinking that this would be a good first post for the new years.

Death where is your victory, death where is your sting?
Happy New Years, happy life, may you be blessed in this year to come.

GP