The Growing Capacity for Endings
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Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), 563 - 483 BC
At the beginning of the year, which so appropriately falls in the mid-Holy Nights, let's notice our unpeaceful feelings about endings. Endings are death. Living attention is no longer paid to what had been evolving through time. Interest is over. Meaning is complete or can go no further. Or something has reached the point of enough, of satisfaction, of desire met and of destiny fulfilled.
How do you feel about endings, death, enough, over and other states of finality? Do you feel the withering hidng in germinating?
I will be personal here.
I avoid and resist endings. I ignore endings. I rage at endings. I feel the same thing about completions and fulfillments. I live in a mood of constant development and process. For me even happy endings are lacking.
So this capacity for endings needs so much growth in my soul. As I seek this growth, I quake a bit. Where does this lack of peace with death in life come from? Or with satisfaction? How does it keep me from meaningful beginnings, from true vitality? What thresholds push me back not letting me cross? Am I afraid of the tears or afraid of the joys?
These are my emotional feelings.
Now I contradict myself.
If I didn't love endings, I would not be writing a Holy Nights Message about them. I am at the age where I consider completions and "last times." I recognize endings sooner and bless them. Finality seems like an opportunity. I am at the threshold of the end of this life.
I love death as much as I love birth. I celebrate thresholds, transitions and metamorphoses. And witness them with peace, seeing glory. I also feel them as a continum, a never-ending full of endings! Every death is a birth.
Slowly, I am learning to attend to feelings of satisfaction and good enough. I've stopped always wanting or needing more. I can let go.
And all this changes my relationship to the eternal, the infinite, the cosmic and the universal. I imagine being at peace with endings means knowing the peace of now and enough and never again.
Tonight write down your thoughts and feelings about endings. Go to that place of ending hiding in the beginning of the year and ask yourself what you want to end over the next 364 days. And I don't mean "get rid of" or vanquish from your life as in a New Year's resolution to stop smoking or a wish to end poverty and hunger in the world. What will simply or complexly end this year? I am asking you to live into your relationship to death.
Here is a poem with many beautiful expressions but the one I find the most freeing is "Accustom yourselves to death gently." Embrace the little deaths, the endings of the year.
Chorus of the Clouds
Nelly Sachs
We are full of sighs, full of glances
We are full of laughter
And at times we bear your faces.
We are not far from you.
Who knows how many tears you have shed through our weeping?
How much longing forms us?
We are players at dying
Accustom yourselves to death gently
You, the unpracticed ones, who learn nothing in the night.
Many angels are given to you
But you do not see them.
Learn something from the Holy Nights, listen to the Buddha and see the angels.
Endings....I hate them. I resist them. I watch marathon episodes of my favorite TV series all afternoon so the show seems to go on and on. I started worrying about the death of my mother when I was only eight and never quite lost the aching fear of that ending that would one day come...until it came. And then slowly I started to see the exquisite beauty of partings; the new growth that rose miraculously from the ashes of my grief....I began to know the necessity of endings. And for all my ancient antipathy towards them, I began to honor the endings; to let go gently with love as I set off freely down a new and joyous path.
ReplyDeleteOn this eighth Holy night, I celebrate the beginning of a New Year as I say goodbye to the old. My Father passed away last February. After a battle with pancreatic cancer he crossed the threshold with peace and beauty- A truly blessed passing. Yet throughout these past few months there have been moments where my heart has been full of sadness. His passing altered my view of mortality. What happens when one moves on? What happens to those of us who stay? Where is my journey headed? My husbands? My children? We just don't know. In the midst of the passing of a blessed man, I grapple with my own existence and the existence of my loved ones.
ReplyDeleteMy Mother struggled- many tearful phone calls after 46 years of marriage to the love of her life. A wondering about the meaning in it all- the going on. Then without warning- a new love. My Mother meets a wonderful man who is also grieving. They find each other- a widow and a widower and my joy blossoms. My faith renewed - my Mother misses my Father and yet finds joy in a new human connection. I expect to be dismayed and instead am overjoyed and at peace in her happiness and laughter again.
The angels are there. Ever watching, quiet, yet guiding. I guess I just don't know. So I marvel at the wonder of it all. While it still doesn't make sense- I don't know if it is supposed to - I try to keep my own worrying at bay. I am peaceful and find joy in the beauty around me- the love.
Jen
This last week I had to put my dog down. We did this out on a farm so I faced this ending fully. This year, I had a baby, not just a baby born but a family of 4 children dying, a family of 5 being born. This year, my oldest went through her 9 year change, and in my spirit, so did I. Who we were before is unrecoverable.
ReplyDeleteIt takes courage to birth a death.....to bring it to pass in fullness without fear requires attention. We will never be the same, we will be larger yet without what was before.
I keep coming back to...
The end of a matter is better than it's beginning, and patience is better than pride. (Eccesiastes 7:8)
I cannot see the whole while on the journey but at the end, the entirety of the thing is better than the seedling infancy that started it. The risen, living christ impulse far more powerful than the initial light of the babe in a manger.
Contemplating this beautiful Buddha quote, as I am weeks into the mutual decision to end a 27 year marriage. I am grieving, my husband is off to explore a new relationship. I need to process, it appears to me he does not. Letting go of that and taking assesment instead of judgement, I am noticing the our physical lives, all those things we measure by time, can have beginnings and endings. Beyond that, there is the ever presence of who we truly are, the source of the peace from which all is well. The flowing water, the burning fire, the gusting wind. As Spirt has our back, these beginnings and endings are the illusion of our minds. We can play in the mind - in celebration, in grief and that's what humans do. The paradox of coming full circle back to peace from our source.
ReplyDeleteThere are different types of endings - the endings where there is the death of a loved one, when I realised that my expression of grief became an expression of my love... the ending of my time on a wonderful course where I connected at the deepest level with wonderful people, but this was really hard. Again, I felt my love, but at the same time I felt myself becoming smaller as I departed from my 'tribe' - and I think the painful thing here was in a sense my own 'ending', as I felt myself becoming less than what I had been, as if all alone in the world. The disconnection is what seems hard - if I physically disconnect from those that I love, can I then maintain my connection with my inner self in order to connect with others?
ReplyDeleteThe death of a relationship, my marriage, is a difficult one to accept. I did not want this "death". My now ex-husband chose to leave us and then to have an affair. I worked to reconcile after all of this, and he still chose not to come back to us (myself and my 3 children, ages 8,6 and 3). I see the pain in my children's eyes, especially my 8 year old boy when their dad can't or won't be available. It's not consistent. It seems that the death of someone you love is easier (my father passed away 1 1/2 years ago) in that you don't keep hoping they will turn up and everything will be right again. I know in my head that this ending is an opportunity for other beginnings, and still I grieve and mourn and get angry. And still, I want to teach my children the value of the endings and completions. I have much to learn.
ReplyDeleteWhile journaling this night, I thought of all the ones I've lost to death. And how they are gone from me. Period.
ReplyDeleteBut they don't feel truly gone. And that's because of Love.
Love never ends. Love never dies.
Love is the exception to this rule that all things die. Cosmic/spiritual Love is the thing that changed the world at the turning point of time. And I have faith that it never ends.
This brings me peace.
sometimes I feel like I live so much in the imaginings of the future and the memories of the past that my life is one long stream of endings and beginnings without ending or beginning...perhaps I need to focus on the day, the hour, the moment
ReplyDeleteAs I examine my relationship to endings, it seems I have a tendency to allow myself to be held captive between the past and the future - not readily letting go of the past nor freely jumping with both feet into the future. I don't understand it, as I love beginnings, but still I hold on for dear life to the past. (An oxymoron, yes?) Of course, not letting go makes it impossible to move forward, and new beginnings without letting go of the past results in overwhelm, conflicts, and clutter.
ReplyDeleteAs well, I can see that I need to improve my relationship to the "Spirits of Time," which I believe is related. Picture that person hanging from the second hand of the clock tower to prevent it from striking midnight. My continued attempts to deny the existence of time is as improbable as defying gravity. No matter how many times I attempt to take to the air or bury my head in the sand, time and gravity still exist - at least in this realm. (Thank you, Lynn, for bringing this to my consciousness so I can work on it.)
In the spiritual realm, time is of another matter and eternity is a factor. For that matter, does anything ever really come to an end?
When I lost my mother last year it became very clear to me that it's not over when "it's over." Relationships to those on the other side do not end, they merely change.
I thought a love relationship that ended in my mid twenties was over. I even moved an ocean away to insure it. We renewed the relationship again in my 40's, but it quickly came to an abrupt end, at which time I closed the book, in no uncertain terms, and threw away the key. Now, 20 years later, with the advent of Facebook, this person has showed up again! (I wonder if this relationship in on some kind of planetary clock?!) I'm presently holding them at a distance with the proverbial ten foot pole, but can't get myself to delete them from my contacts.
Perhaps we believe we can choose our endings, but our karma speaks louder than words. Perhaps it's not over until there's nothing more for us to learn from one another. (Round 3?!!) Should we turn these "opportunities" away? That is the question only we/I can answer. I suppose the lessons we need would come back to meet us in some other form. I ask myself: Have a learned what I needed to learn? Is there something this person needs from me before they can move on? Am I being selfish or cowardly by withholding my participation in the process? Do I make my decisions for my own gratification or for the good of all? It is time again to move on, or must I go through?
I pray that I will be able to summon courage, the Lion (the Spirits of Will) and The Christ, to find my way.
After thought: Love, as any thought or deed, once created is never lost. It lives in the astral, etheric, or spiritual realms, a being of its own. When we recall an event, person, or deed, they rise up to meet us. It's up to us to decide just who or what we choose to "call up,"... or leave it in peace.
As Christ said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." Revelations 22:13
ReplyDeleteHe is eternal and His love is eternal; it is the bridge from our own earthly incarnation to our eternal divine incarnation. From a tiny, helpless, newborn baby to "the bright Morning Star", the light and salvation of the world.
As a child I used to mourn the death of Jesus as I didn't fully understand all that it represented. As Klavers said in their post, "It takes courage to birth a death.....to bring it to pass in fullness without fear requires attention. We will never be the same, we will be larger yet without what was before."
As I've grown up, both physically and spiritually, I have been striving to have enough courage to birth the death of Jesus within myself. To give it all the attention it requires and deserves without fear; fear of losing myself in order to find myself; fear of being more than myself or less of myself; fear of having no control or having too much power.
As I sat in Church a couple of weeks ago I decided to read the last page of the bible as I couldn't remember how it ended. Now, as I reflect on this message of our growing capacity for endings, it seems even more relevant as the last line reads:
"The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen"
Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well....The depth of the feelings, emotions of your lives and sharing have touched my soul. I have experienced death of parents, grandparents, siblings, children. Have walked with friends through divorce, children leaving, everything you have shared. Can I, you, we, make peace with any or all of it? I am blessed. I can. Sometimes I forget who and Whose I am and get lost in emotions and feelings that hurt, bring me down into what I call hell.
ReplyDeleteIf I can identify and be one with what is eternal, that has no beginning or end, then I can find peace in those temporal, human, experiences and conditions.
Praying for each of us, as we discover we are Spiritual beings having a human experience, can find that peace in our temporal struggles. God bless. Bob
I love Nelly Sachs'poem of the clouds. How they seem to be so close to us, to even express our own feelings sometimes. I remind myself every night that I am going to be with the angels while I sleep. so the passage of "learning nothing in the night" and of not seeing the angels is very poignant.
ReplyDeleteIn to-days message you talk about standing tall and upright. The advent Bible reading in the Christian Community and other churches, too: Luke 21,25: "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is coming near". And further on: "Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the son of man." These always strike me so strongly. This is what we have to learn: To stand upright and be strong in the face of great challenges. Contemplating the stillness is what will give us the strength.
"Teach your children well;
ReplyDeletetheir father's hell
will slowly go by..."
Okay, I'll buy that all the little closures are little deaths, and it takes a great amount of courage to face them and move on.
In my experience, divorce is the end of a marriage for a wife, and the end of a household for a family. It is not the death of the family, nor is the father dead to the children. Not by a long shot.
Death by comparison, as noted earlier, is much cleaner, and doesn't call up nearly the same amount of self-review as abandonment by someone who is still alive. With somebody else. With someone else's kids, perhaps.
I've found divorce to be a weird beginning more than an ending because none of those relationships end. They find themselves bobbing in uncharted waters and better get swimming in order to make any sense of it, eventually, but they are far from over and done.
Now I wonder if we can teach kids anything at all except to model living courageously...