“When the river is ice, ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” William Stafford
There was no ice on the Virgin River when we hiked the Zion National Park trail on that March Sunday. But Stafford’s words always haunt me whenever I am near a river, any river.
And so, a few hours later, when the cell phone call came from my sister in New Hampshire, announcing that her husband of 42 years had died suddenly, I was in the proper frame of mind to be able to answer, “yes, of course,” to her request that I conduct his funeral.
And while I usually prefer officiating at funerals rather than weddings, I must admit that preparing a service for a brother-in-law who was a mere month older than I am was more of a challenge than I anticipated.
For the funeral service is always as much, if not more, about the people in attendance: everyone is silently reviewing their own lives even as the deceased is being eulogized.
Each of us is secretly wondering ‘what will be said about me at my funeral,’ which invites the life review that is reflected in Stafford’s ask me whether what I have done is my life.
And its follow up: so what do I need to be doing before I too run out of Time? Or more to the point: how do I know whether what I am doing is my life? As Quaker educator Parker Palmer annoying puts it:
“Everyone has a life that is different from the “I” of daily consciousness, a life that is trying to live through the “I” who is its vessel. This is what the poet knows and what every wisdom tradition teaches: there is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective masks and self-serving fictions, and my True Self.”
This True Self is of course is the essence one tries to lift up and celebrate at a funeral. It helps if the person has lived an authentic life….but what exactly does THAT mean? I suspect a clue is contained in the other part of the poet’s lines: “ask me mistakes I have made….”
For while the ego I strives to be perfect, the cosmic eye has other plans, plans that demand trial and error, not unlike the ‘mistakes’ in DNA that open possibilities for something new to emerge, for evolution to continue its creative unfolding.
For humans of course this growing edge has to do with choices we make, consciously or unconsciously. And a funeral makes us confront not just our own deaths but our very lives.
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