death

May 13, 2020

When Nothing is Sacred, Not the Dead, not Mothers, not Even Babies

Let’s say you wanted to convince people to accept you as their leader–how would you best go about it?  You might flatter them or promise them something they really want.  You might show them how forceful you could be or that they could trust you. You might tell them about all the good ideas you have for making their lives better.   But I would suggest that the worst way possible was what occurred in Afghanistan this week where three militants chose as their targets a maternity hospital in Kabul, killing 23 newborns, new mothers, and nurses and wounding many more.  No one has yet accepted responsibility, but who can doubt that it is some radicalized young men who live on a different planet than the rest of us.  They do not look around and see a world full of fellow human beings, they see a world of true believers and infidels, and killing an infidel at any time at any age seems to them an excellent thing to do.

It is not only the newborns who have come under fire this week.  A funeral for a local police commander in eastern Afghanistan was also attacked by the Islamic State, leaving 24 mourners dead and over 100 wounded.  IS proudly announced:”The jihadist Abdallah al-Ansari hit Afghan security forces and militia …exploding his [suicide] belt … [and] killing and wounding 100 non-believers.”

In other words IS is saying, “We are the followers of God, and want you to follow him too.”

“What does God want us to do?”

“To kill anyone who does not follow Him. “

The non-believers in the maternal hospital were Shiite Muslims, as presumably were those in the funeral.

These most sacred moments of our earthly existence, the joy of bringing new life into the world and the grief we honor as life ends seem to have no meaning whatsoever to the perpetrators of these horrific attacks. Doesn’t it seem that a baseline, a sine qua non of being human is to recognize the sanctity of these moments of arrival and departure?  Then isn’t it evident that to defile them, to turn these solemn, wondrous moments into terror-filled bloodbaths is to mark you as alien to our race, undeserving of any sympathy and certainly making any impulse to follow your teaching absurd?

 

February 16, 2019

What Do You Do with Captured Terrorists?

An unrepentant terrorist’s wife in a prison camp in Syria who wants to go back to live in London?   This is the riddle of Shamima Begum, the UK citizen who at 15 was groomed to be part of the Caliphate so with two girlfriends took off for Syria.  There she willingly married a jihadist and had two children. The Caliphate has disappeared now, she and her Dutch husband is a prisoner, her two children are dead of malnutrition, and she’s about to give birth to another child. She wants to return to the UK for her baby’s sake, but apparently shows no remorse for taking up the cause of ISIS.  Should the UK let her back in?  Is she fit to be a mother?  Is she going to keep on supporting ISIS, maybe set off a bomb or two in Victoria Station? This is someone who said life was “normal” in Raqqa, who claims she shrugged off seeing the heads of those who were decapitated tossed into rubbish bins.

Sentiments around her repatriation range from “let her rot in hell there in Syria” to “let’s think of a way to save her brainwashed soul and that of her child.”

Here’s what we should say to her:

You have been seeking the sacred in life, and were told by people you trusted that it can be found in a new society where everyone will live according to the wisdom delivered to us ages ago through a Divine agency. 

You and they have misjudged the Divine. 

We are surrounded by experiences that can bring us a sense of the Divine, of the Sacred, of God—whatever word you give It is always inadequate, but we know It when we experience It because the gauge is something every human being has within them: compassion. Even tragic experiences like witnessing the death of a friend or facing your own demise can bring us this sense of awe, of a transcendence  that defies description as compassion for the suffering of others overwhelms us or their compassion washes over us in our hours of trial.   

But without compassion death becomes the vehicle for the darker forces that still lurk beneath the veneer of civilization.  The savagery of our animal natures can erupt at any moment, and if reinforced by those preaching a gospel of hate, claiming a vengeful god told them the secrets of the universe or wrote it in a book thousands of years ago and the secret is to mercilessly enslave some of the unbelievers and cut the throats of others—well then, they have been blinded by a desire for power over others rather than compassion for them.  They pervert the Sacrament of Death.

The road to God is through compassion. 

The world now has its hands full of thousands of radicalized (read: delusional and dangerous) men and women, together with their offspring who will also fall under the spell of this doctrine unless something is done about it.  What that something will be has yet to be determined, but if there is any hope for a better world, the need to teach that the Divine begins with our humanity to others is the key.

March 21, 2018

Peace in the Middle East Can Begin with Apologies

Today a BBC interview with Dr. Izzeldin Abueleish provided a much-needed wake up call to the world.   Dr. Abueleish lived in Gaza with his family in 2009 at the time when the Israeli army was striking back at the Palestinians. Two shells crashed into the bedroom of his house, killing 3 of his daughters and a niece while wounding several other family members.   Since then his mission has been to help end the violence that has engulfed the entire region. For him, a key part of this would be an apology from Israel, something he has not yet received.   Why would this be important? Because, he explains, it would be an acknowledgement that he and his family were not just the detritus of battle, worth no more than the rubble of a fallen building.  They were and are human beings, with all the dignity and value that entails.  This is the lesson that people in conflict forget time and time again. We dehumanize our opponents treating them as vermin or targets instead of  neighbors–real people, human beings.

It would have been so easy for the doctor to slide into a never-ending hatred of those responsible, but, as the old saying goes, hatred is like drinking a cup of poison and expecting your enemy to die. There has to be more, there has to be reconciliation, and for that there has to be a willingness on both sides to seek restorative justice and not retribution. It begins with the stories– the pain, the losses, the fear–all parties listening to the others,  humanizing what has been dehumanized.  Then there have to be apologies. It’s difficult to see why the Israeli government or military or both cannot say they are sorry for what happened to those girls in Gaza that day.  They claim they were firing on militants and maybe they were, but why should that make it more difficult to apologize?  Are they afraid of seeming weak?

Dr. Abueleish turned his back on hatred.  His way of dealing with his loss has been  to establish a foundation that encourages women from the Middle East to study at universities: Daughters for Life.  

He feels that educating young women is one of the keys to finding peace in the Middle East.  One of the keys.  There are so many.  But who can doubt that he’s right and applaud his efforts.

 

June 21, 2017

Christianity and Islam in the Pursuit of Pain

The greatest threat to the modern world can be found in the revival of a belief from the Middle Ages: the pursuit of pain is a good thing. As Stephen Greenblatt points out in his recent book The Swerve, once upon a time there was a notion that inflicting pain upon our sinful bodies was a holy pursuit.   To mimic the kind of pain that the Savior experienced on the road to Golgotha would allow us to share the sanctity of His suffering, so it was not unusual in those benighted times to wear a hairshirt, or to find groups of flagellants publically flogging themselves with iron-pointed whips, or monks beating each other with rods, all in an effort to imitate Christ.

Common sense would dictate that this is a bad idea. It calls to mind that unfortunate group of young people today who are cutting themselves in order to feel the pain.   Any parent who finds their child has sunk into this practice will get that child to a therapist as quickly as possible.   Homo sapiens is programmed to  pursue the pleasures of life, not the pains, but in the Middle Ages a powerful force overrode this basic instinct. That force was belief in the afterlife.

Yes, the afterlife… The Great Beyond… The Happy Hunting Ground– or the Not-So-Happy if you have been a sinner and failed to get right with God before the end. As Greenblatt reminds us, Sir Thomas More’s 16th century book Utopia which was so progressive in many of its policies (sharing the wealth, universal health care, freedom of religion) drew a hard line in the sands of that fabled island: if you did not believe in the rewards and punishments of a heaven and hell, you would be executed immediately. Rejection of an afterlife was dangerous in Utopia, because without the fear of hell, More felt that people will always try to lie, cheat, and murder their way into greater wealth and power.    We only need jails and punishments in the here and now because people don’t believe in the punishments of the hereafter.

Sir Thomas may have been right about the power of the fear of God.   Certainly there is no sign since the Enlightenment began increasing the ranks of the atheists that we’ve created a Utopia anywhere, though Scandinavia may be getting close. But More was beyond a doubt wrong about making the afterlife the foundation of his belief system. Under radical Islam, that belief is what is causing so much senseless death and destruction every day, coupled as it is with a revival and glorification of the medieval pursuit of pain.   Who would ever have believed that this cult of death would take root in the 21st century, a cult where suicide bombers and martyrdom become the highest form of community service, where men and women are encouraged to undertake “missions” that they know will lead to their painful deaths, all for a misguided idea that a reward awaits you in Paradise?

Some might argue that it’s not belief in an afterlife per se that is the problem, but rather, the particular afterlife that is being peddled to these would-be heroes.  But the problem here is that, if you are a rational creature, you would like some evidence of which afterlife that’s being offered by the religions of the world is the genuine article and not some knock-off fakery.    How would you talk a suicide bomber out of his belief that the koranic Paradise is really there, just waiting for him if he blows himself up in the right spot? By offering him an alternative view? Christ on the cross? Abraham’s bosom? Angels hosanna-ing?

What would therapy be for a deluded young person whose greatest aspiration is to be a martyr? Perhaps if we do in fact need the fear of God to keep the world from disintegrating it should be the God of Compassion–focused on making this life as pleasant as possible for as many as possible without reference to what happens when we cross that unknowable Divide.

October 11, 2016

Dementia and the Right to Die

If anything is writ upon the Wall of Fate, it is that the right to die will eventually become as much a part of the culture as the right to choose who to marry. Think of where we were 300 years ago: marriages were arranged by parents, women were viewed as the intellectual inferiors of men, minorities were denied basic human rights, homosexuality was utterly taboo. Today, although there is undeniably work to be done to achieve equality in each of these areas, we are well on our way to a world where each of these groups of people are accorded a status equal to the once all-powerful white male, at least in the Western World.

The right to end a pregnancy was won several decades ago, and, while not on as solid a footing as the other advances mentioned, it would be difficult to turn back the clock on that issue. Now the turn has come for the right to die.

Currently five states allow terminally-ill citizens to choose a painless, immediate death rather than wait for nature to take its course with all the agonies, both mental and physical, that accompany a lingering death. More states will surely follow in the near future as poll numbers show : 70% now support euthanasia for the terminally ill.

The next step after that will be to ensure that the right to die includes those suffering from dementia.   A moving and convincing manifesto by Canadian Gillian Bennett, “Dead at Noon,” says it all and should be required reading for all politicians and citizens weighing in on this subject. Bennett realized the road ahead for her was not a pretty one as she became more and more forgetful. “All I lose is an indefinite number of years of being a vegetable in a hospital setting, eating up the country’s money but having not the faintest idea of who I am.”   Prevented by law from seeking a doctor’s help in ending her life, she took action herself with a handful of barbiturates in 2014.

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about “Ethical Suicide Parlors” in one of his futuristic short stories, “Welcome to the Monkey House,”  a comfortable setting with support from professionals and family on the day of the last chapter of our lives.  That’s what we need now, so that anyone who can sense the approach of a debilitating dementia can opt for a death with dignity.

Of course there are potential problems, but the good that would result far outweighs any of them.   And if you believe that God doesn’t want us to take our own life, the question then becomes, how do you know that? and would God rather have us live for months and years without even knowing our own names, knowing nothing but how to chew food?

August 22, 2016

The Death of Immortality

A young person living in a society that’s safe and secure doesn’t think about death that much. In fact, there’s a feeling when you’re young, that death is a long way off, that it can’t touch you.   Yeah, sure you know it will at some point, but you don’t need to worry about it because there are so many people in your family older than you—they’re your cushion, your buffer between the guy with the scythe and you. More likely than not he’ll be paying  them a visit before he turns his empty eyes in your direction. Because Death seems so far away, with so many in line ahead of you, a healthy young person quite rightly focuses on the long life stretching before them and attains what could almost be called a feeling of immortality.

And then your great-grandparents die, then your grandparents one-by-one, and finally your parents and their brothers and sisters. All of those members of the older generations succumb to the inevitable until no one stands between you and the grave. You’re face-to-face with that fellow with the grinning skull, la Camarde as the French call him—the one without a nose.  He is holding an hourglass  in your direction and there’s a lot more sand in the bottom than in the top.

The Germans are a melancholy people and also good at coming up with jawbreaking words to describe what otherwise defies description, words like Schadenfreude, Weltanschauung, Wanderlust.  To designate this arrival at the gateway to our final decades the German language gives us Unsterblichkeitstod—“The Death of Immortality”—a word, that captures this disquieting realization perfectly.*

With the passing of my father this week after 99 years of healthy living and unfailing memory, I find I can’t get that word out of my mind.  Time to face it. You’re not going to make it out alive.   Dad anchored our whole family’s lives for what seemed like forever and now reality has shifted.

So…

Dig out that old copy of “Death Be Not Proud” or the Bible or whatever philosophy does it for you,… you can’t put it off any more.

*Benn Schott created this word for his book  Schottenfreude.

August 14, 2016

The Power of Death

Amid the trivialities of our day-to-day life comes that force that slices through it all, grabs you by the throat and brings you to your knees—Death.

With the passing of one of my dearest friends, the power of Death once again overwhelms the Everyday, leaving that gaping hole in the universe.  The mind spins uncontrollably… lost…..gone… Grief floods our very being and saps our strength.  What now?… How can we come to terms with it? …The finality of existence, that feeling of despair slipping into hopelessness… How do we stand up to Death’s power?

The Church has an answer. The Stoics have another. The Hindu sages take refuge in maya—it’s all illusion.

Believe what you can, as Darwin told us. But what’s important is the Universal, that in its extreme sorrow, Death brings us to the same place as extreme joy– the transcendent dimension of existence where we can connect with the Divine.  Through meditation, through prayer if you like, by connecting with others through rituals, the madness of Death becomes something sacred. We circle the wagons, link arms with survivors and feed on the memories of those we loved.  We find our humanity in loss.

But it’s still hard.

 

June 13, 2016

World War III–It’s Here

World War III has started, folks. Don’t wait for a nuclear weapon to go off or a Gulf of Tonkin incident that will kick things into high gear. It’s here, and has been here since 9/11, first in Iraq, then Afghanistan, and now Syria, Yeman, Pakistan, Bengladesh, Libya, Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Mali, Egypt and Turkey. And it’s not just the developing world:  The massacres in Brussels, Paris, Orlando, and San Bernadino were battles in this war.  Future battles are being planned right now.

The sides?

Radical Islam vs. the rest of the world

and

Islam Type A vs. Islam Types B, C, D, and F

It’s a war without borders, a truly world war, where no one knows when an angry man or woman, prompted by a religious leader, facilitated by social media, lax gun laws or ambitious gun-runners, will kill anyone anytime anyhow.   It can be soldier vs. soldier but doesn’t have to be–any death will do and the more the better.   Get used to it. There is no end in sight.

There will be, however, an end. That will come in one of two ways:

1) we all sink into such a miserable state of endless bloodbaths and fleeing refugees that we heave a collective sigh of despair and swear off all violence forever, every last man and woman of us on this planet

or

2) we stop listening to leaders and sacred texts that justify killing innocent people in the name of religion.  We recognize that the Sacred does exist in this world, but it can be found in our hearts.  Death itself is sacred.  We know this when we watch our loved ones face its challenges and are taken from us.  Killing in the name of religion, however, is the antithesis of the Sacred, it defines the Dark Side.  It robs the victims of their lives and the killers of their humanity.

We will only come to this point if parents can begin to teach their children that life and death are both sacred, despite what you learned from your religion.  Start teaching!

For more on this see ISIS and the Phoney War 

January 14, 2016

The Massacres of Innocents

Jakarta, San Bernadino, Paris, Boston, Mumbai, Baghdad, Baghdad, Baghdad….this is just the beginning of a list that will go on and on into the future as it becomes clearer and clearer where the world is going. A combination of easy access to guns and bomb-making instructions, worldwide media attention, and young men overloaded with a desire to fight have made all of us targets in what will perhaps be known as World War III. Unlike the other two world wars, this won’t be fought just with standing armies, navies, and airforces. It will be fought by individuals and small groups anywhere in the world who get excited by angry leaders anywhere in the world, leaders who grab their attention and make blowing yourself up with as many bystanders as possible sound like a good thing to do. Young males programmed by natural selection to fight find themselves living in what a Belgian official on the BBC today called “a mental ghetto” where they constantly hear the need to kill the infidel, kill the apostate, kill the oppressors, the bullies, the Other.   In these ghettos there is a very little debate or serious reflection or reason–it’s all about a Cause, Glory, and Death.

We have to face the facts.   There is no way to stop this unless we were to un-create the internet where any hothead in a distant country can spew hate and teach someone to build a bomb.  It’s not going to stop until we shut down the social media sites where young people are seduced into joining the Holy War,  or until we stop arms trafficking, or censor the media so the attacks do not get so much play and convince others that similar massacres are excellent ways to further their Cause. None of that is going to happen anytime soon.

The other facts to face were made clear in a Zogby survey that showed that, yes, a vast majority of Muslims in every country found extremist movements like IS and Al Qaeda were a “total perversion of Islam,” but unfortunately in every country there is a group who thinks the methods of IS are in accord with the teachings of Islam. That number is 15% in the Palestinian sectors, 13% in Jordan, and 10% in Saudi Arabia. What that means is that in Saudi Arabia alone there are 2.8 million people who would seem to support the wars, massacres, torture, executions, kidnappings, and rapes that we’ve seen of late.

There has been no end to the young men and sometimes women streaming to Syria to join the fight, shoulder-to-shoulder with IS. So where will it all end? Prepare we are in for another Hundred Years War, a war of attrition where dozens of innocents are killed every so often, more and more bombs are dropped in Syria and Iraq, and more and more draconian laws are put in place at home to try to stem the tide of attacks.

The only hope of changing any of this in the long run is to do what the Charter for Compassion is doing, and what the idea of Universal Sacraments is all about: find some common ground that everyone of every faith or no faith can agree is part of what it means to be human.   Teach young people that death is a sacred part of life, and that killing someone is not an avenue to God, but a plunge into the Dark Side. To counteract the power of a holy book is a tough job, but it’s being done—remember the vast majority of Muslims do NOT find IS’s methods acceptable.  They have rejected the jihadists’ death-worship.

Every country should enact laws, if they have not already done so, that to teach the slaughter of innocents, to persuade someone to become a suicide bomber is the foulest crime against humanity.  Freedom of Speech should not extend into that dark realm.   Rallying around the sanctity of human life is just a starting point to arrive at other universals that can bring us all together in a world that is coming apart at the seams.

November 2, 2015

“Our Town” at Northern Stage.

I’d never seen Our Town before. I’d read it of course.   Thornton Wilder’s best-known play has been a staple in high school English classes ever since its debut back in 1938, and for good reason. But reading it is nothing, seeing it is everything. There’s no scenery and not much in the way of costumes. It’s not that kind of play. But in the third act, watch out. When it’s done right, you’ll be thinking about what you saw for weeks, or maybe even a lifetime.

And it was done right at Northern Stage in White River Jct., Vt. in a run that just ended on Saturday. Carol Dunne, the artistic director, knows how to cast, and knows how to get the best performances from her actors. There wasn’t a weak part in the ensemble, even among the children who populate Grovers Corners. John Hutton as the stage manager was terrific, with a voice any performer would envy, and a presence that was at once commanding, but serene in his omniscience. Sutton Crawford in the role of Emily had the audience in the palm of her hand with exactly the right combination of innocence and maturity. We loved Emily from the beginning and when she’s up in her room, gazing at the moon—what an extraordinarily beautiful thing to witness!

But the image that haunts us, that slices through us right to the depths of our being, is the end of Act III, with those dead souls in the graveyard, waiting, waiting… They know what we don’t. They stare straight ahead, speaking laconically, without moving in the dim light. They are in touch with the stars, with eternity, with the Divine, while the grieving husband collapses sobbing on the grave of his wife. No words can describe what the stage brings to a scene like that. It’s the power of live theatre, the Sacrament of the Arts, and Wilder understood it better than most.

Our Town may be the best American play ever written.   It’ll be around forever. Let’s hope Northern Stage in its brand-new theatre will be, too.  If you’re in New England, check them out!