Dia de los Muertos: When Death is Meaningless
A Sermon By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
October 30, 2005
How inspiring, how uplifting it was for me to come home after five long days of travel and meetings in Boston, to drive along Ina on my way to my Worship Associates meeting Wednesday night and to see those of you in my congregation there on the corner at Thornydale holding signs and candles in a vigil for Peace! It gives me hope that our religious community will continue to be a place where people can come together feeling empowered to join their voices in crying out for a better world, singing it from the street corners, shouting it with signs and slogans, or in quiet candlelight memorials of love and remembrance. It makes my ministry meaningful.
Wednesday was the day the 2000th American soldier was killed in Iraq, but we are very much aware of the many thousands more who weren’t American soldiers, who were children in the streets, and families hiding in basements, and soldiers fighting on the other side. Were their deaths meaningless? Because death comes in the midst of war, does that make the death better somehow, more worthy? How do we come to value some deaths over others?
For the mother who has lost her son or daughter, for the father who grieves as well, there is little justification or consolation in death, whether it comes in the midst of war or in the middle of a busy street on a day like any other day. We find ourselves asking “why?”, “Why me?”, “Why my child – or friend – or sister – or co-worker?” As if there really was an answer! As if some force, some god, had pointed and said “You, now,” and they had to go.
One of the scenes that was so startling from 9-11 four years ago was when survivors of the World Trade Center would thank God for their rescue, implying that God had decided who lived and who died. The irony being that the hijackers had thanked God or Allah as well for guiding them to kill so many people. Was the tsunami last December sent by God? Or hurricanes Katrina and Ruth? The concept that a god might be deciding each person’s fate on a daily basis is hard enough to swallow, but that there might be a reason for each person’s death is even more difficult to take. Many people do believe that. Many don’t.
In any case, when death comes, we all grieve and search for meaning in what defies understanding, at least, for most of us. When death comes, we are faced once again with existential questions of the meaning of life and death, questions like “Who am I?” and “What happens to me, the ‘I,’ when I die?” and “How can I exist now and where was I before I was born and where will I be after I die?” Questions to which the search for answers goes on and on, and may go on forever.
Death challenges us to confront our beliefs about god and life and the role of meaning in existence. It makes us take a good look at our faith. Faith isn’t just a word referring to a set of beliefs, of which one is the belief in God. For those of us who don’t believe in god, faith is still a useful concept. Faith is also the trust that life and death and existence as we know it is as it should be, as it has evolved or been created, by happenstance or direction, whether we are loved beyond our puny love in a great Cosmic Love—or not. Faith is a seed in each of us that calls us to trust both what we know and what we sense, to trust what we contemplate and what we desire, to trust what we appreciate and what we regret. That life and death is as it should be, or that life and death is as it—is, this is faith.
We need such faith when we are confronted with endings in an eternal universe, with apparent singularity in an infinite existence. We can’t comprehend. We only know the loss, feel the separation, and look for ways to make ourselves feel better. Some people find themselves contemplating god, and others consider whether reincarnation might be the reality of the infinite existence. The majority of people in the world believe in one or the other. Some of my colleagues in the UU ministry believe in one or the other, or even some existence after death that allows communication with us.
To me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. Fighting over whether a thing can be proven in the realm of religion and existentialism doesn’t help us. Sunsets can’t be proved to the blind. Physics has shown us the fallacy of “seeing is believing” when particles have proven (proven?) to be sometimes matter, sometimes energy, sometimes here, and then, of a sudden, there. We are learning about the stars now with waves of light that our eyes can’t even see, but we have created technologies that bring them to our consciousness and allow us to find planets far outside our own solar system. We need not fear the open mind which recognizes that mysteries abound in our universe, and possibilities are unending.
Which is to say, what beliefs and ideas bring you solace in your grief, let them be. That has always been the power of mythology and ritual. It isn’t the beliefs that come naturally to us that cause pain, but the dogmas, the authoritarian teachings that force one belief over another. Freedom of religion means freedom to choose, not freedom from religion, although it means that, too.
In one sense, there is no such thing as a meaningless death. From the moment we are conceived, death was dealt to us, and it may be fought and postponed, but never conquered. Death and life are interwoven; we die so that others might live. Millions die early, earlier than we would wish or hope, from disease or hunger or wars or accidents. Does this make their deaths meaningless? What is meaningful in death is that whatever bit of life we have is appreciated, even a first breath or a warm touch. We don’t want to look at it this way, when a baby we love dies suddenly, without having had the chance to live more than a few days or weeks, but nothing will help except to cherish and appreciate what love there was, even the touch of a stranger to an abandoned child, the touch of another life.
The longer we live, and the more death we witness, the more we come to realize that any day can be our last, any breath our last. So we learn to cherish each other and that in itself brings meaning to life and death.
One of the ways we confront our fears of the unknown which is death is to wield the sword of humor. Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is a time we can honor our ancestors and remember our dead while at the same time poke fun at that which brings us the most pain. For we know that even the sword of humor turns eventually into an embrace and we have to let go. May you bring meaning to the life you have, celebrate the moments with those you love, and thus, never regret when death comes that you did not cherish that life. And remember, no matter what the past has dealt, today is beginning of the rest of your life. Live it with peace in your heart.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson