Faith: From death to life

As I walk alongside my mother in her final journey from death to life, I realize that Christianity - as well as other religions, and nature itself -suggests that the pattern of transformation is not death avoided, but death transformed. In other words, the only trustworthy pattern of spiritual transformation is death and resurrection.

Death and life are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other. Each time you surrender, each time you trust the dying, your faith is led to a deeper level and you discover a Larger Self underneath. In today's online meditation, Father Richard Rohr describes it like this: "You decide not to push yourself to the front of the line, and something much better happens in the back of the line. You let go of your narcissistic anger, and you find that you start feeling much happier. You surrender your need to control your partner, and finally the relationship blossoms or ends. Yet each time it is a choice - and each time it is a kind of dying. It seems we only know what life is when we know what death is."

The mystics and great saints learned to trust this pattern and often said, in effect, "What did I ever lose by dying?" Or Paul's famous one-liner: "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21). Today even scientific studies, including those of near-death experiences, reveal this same pattern. Things change and grow by dying to their present state, but each time it is a risk. We always wonder, "Will it work this time?" Many academic disciplines are coming together, each in their own way, to say that there's a constant movement of loss and renewal at work in this world at every level. It seems to be the pattern of all growth and evolution. To be alive means to surrender to this inevitable flow. It's the same pattern in every atom, in every human relationship, and in every galaxy. Indigenous peoples, Hindu gurus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus all saw it clearly in human history and named it as a kind of "necessary dying."

If this pattern is true, it has been true all the time and everywhere. Such realization did not just start 2,000 years ago. All of us have to eventually learn to let go of something smaller so something bigger can happen. But that's not a religion - it's highly visible truth. It is the Way Reality Works.

This is not a religion to be either fervently joined or angrily rejected. It is a train ride already in motion. The tracks are visible everywhere. You can be a willing and happy traveler. Or not.

Rev. Dr. Cheryl Fleckenstein is the Intentional Interim Pastor for Northwood United Methodist Church in Esko and Norton Park UMC in Duluth.