Because this all ends

Love fiercely.
Because this all ends.

I saw these words written in a low-quality jpg image, shared on Facebook. Shared by someone who, I would say, considers himself a sophisticated New Yorker. A person seeking an “optimal state of being,” as long as it has nothing to do with religion, Jesus, or any of that nonsense he saw his mother meddling with, to no good end, in his formative years.

The words struck me for two major reasons. Let me explain.

First,

There is an undeniable and important truth here. We’re all going to end someday. All this: the trees, the birds, the bees, the breeze, you and me; dead and gone, forever. That is a harsh and inescapable fact. Even with all their big talk about heaven, the “religious people,” the clergyman, Padre Pedro Baptiste de San Lazaro de los Perros can do nothing about that hardest-hitting truth: “No matter what I do, you’re gonna die Charlie.”

It’s a shame to hear those who claim Jesus – King and Priest, God and Savior – babbling about “absent from the body, present with the Lord.” A truth pitifully held like a pillow on a bed of coals. A cheap bandaid on a metastasizing tumor. Oh, they mean well, I guess. But do they really know what they’re saying? You might ask yourself this, as I do. It strikes me as borderline offensive, most times just escapist and repressive, trying to be more spiritual than God. As if a death in this world doesn’t matter because they’re in a special little place now where everyone is prancing around with harps and halos. Charming, sweet, but such a gross misrepresentation of a spiritual reality that blows harps and halos out of the water.

But this leads me to my other striking point.

Second,

These words also reveal the place to which I’ve run for my redemption: myself. But there is a major issue with that, remember? I’m going to end. So my consolation then becomes, “I’ll make the most of this, now! I’ll help others!” But why? If there’s no bottom, if there’s no solid place to stand in the end – why make the effort? Here it is: a denial of the very thing that is acknowledged. If this is it, if this “all ends”, then why love at all? Why put the effort to deny myself and chase after some vague euphemism, to “love fiercely?” Is it because, maybe, I’m thinking, hoping (if I can use such a word), that somehow, someway, if I just do some good and impact people in some good way, that somehow this will all just mystically and magically mean something in the end? What about when all those I love fiercely now are dead and gone too? What then?

If the very place I sit now will one day be forgotten, along with all of the people I know, and oceans of dead time drift on endlessly after our pitiful time as a species is over in this universe, why not just “take fiercely?” Why not? All of us will just end. Full stop. What difference does it make if I give or take?

Look beyond the extremes

You see what happens when denial is introduced on either side? It is very dangerous to fall to either extreme. But guess what? There is a third way. It is a way so counter-intuitive, so cosmically comical, it may be the reason those “seeking the optimal state of being” pass up spirituality and faith altogether. And it is also the reason those of faith tend to treat God as a gentle, wise butler granting their wishes and kissing their boo boos and giving them inspirational words to spiritualize the pain away. Promising them harps and halos as some sort of consolation prize.

But no. There is pain, suffering, and loss that all your human words can’t cover. Yet, there is a hope so deep and massive that it will eclipse even the darkest, vilest lostness this world can throw at you.

Because it is here, the third way beyond the extremes of redemption in yourself or fairyland. It’s the reality that you and I are so broken and dark inside, more than we want to admit; our efforts to “love fiercely” will only be to serve ourselves in the end. But at the same time this third way also points out: you and I are already loved more than we can ever even conceive! You’re loved with a love so much more incredibly fierce than the self-serving darkness of all humanity’s brokenness put together.

It’s not the empty comfort of mere words. It’s real, human arms wrapping around you saying, “There is going to be big trouble in this messed up world. But I’m right here, I found you, and I won’t let go.”

This is what the sophisticated New Yorker and Padre Pedro so often miss. It’s not about being more spiritual, doing more, striving to love more that is going to do it. Can’t you see, you’re already spoken for; if you’d just hold out your empty hands and acknowledge that you have nothing to give, acknowledge the denial you’re soaking in. The hell you’re steeped in.

Whether you live on Wall Street or in San Lazaro’s cathedral, this third way is actual good news. Not just fluff or a striving of self. The fierce love is yours, you can have it today. It can free you up to love others, not to earn some final meaning, but to just truly love others – since you can know you are already so intensely loved. And most of all, you can accept your end because there was someone who met the most intense and fierce end for you.

But there was something more fierce than that hellish end: a resurrection from that end.

That’s the deep hope, that all the evil and pain and loss will become undone in the end, in the resurrection of those who open themselves to this way.

Cosmic Comedy Club

This third way is comical because it doesn’t work like how we think life should. We all tend to look at our lives as a proof in a case at law, always having to work to get that verdict. Guilty or innocent? And the only way to make it in life is to keep gritting your teeth and pushing on. This fits in so well for most things worth doing in life. But at the end of it all, how much gritting is going to be worth it if the teeth you’re gritting together will just be permanently closed when they sow your lips shut in a coffin, or when your body is burned to ash. Where will all that work toward your verdict be then?

But the verdict is already in. It is. Those real, living arms wrapped around you have taken it all for you. That’s right, I’m talking about Jesus Christ. No, no, I’m not talking about the Italian Blue Eyes White Jesus we see depicted in Renaissance art. Not the Jesus Padre Pedro blabbers about in Latin while facing away from the congregation. They’ve got something going for them, for sure. But, no. I mean the real, unspeakable God of this universe, coming to this little blue marble in human form, to take the separation we deserved for our own rejection of God – when Jesus himself was perfect and did not deserve even a harsh look from God. In Jesus we have an unconditional absolute, without such we have nowhere to stand, nothing to base anything on.

It’s hilarious, I know, even idiotic sounding. But it is all those things because it breaks through all our human inclination to climb the mountain, to try and try and try. Not that trying is evil, but without a solid foundation, your efforts will end along with you.

That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the third way. And if you think it’s too farfetched, too stupid to entertain, then you have every right to go on thinking that. Your choice. Really, it is. If you think comforting yourself with a few sentences is going to work to change you into some sort of Western Enlightened Gandhi, by all means, go ahead. Really. See what the words of denial get you, live out those implications and see how much it really motivates you. I challenge you.

Because this all ends.