Life is Death, and Death is Life.
What? That makes no sense,
right? Aren’t they opposites?
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| Without the death of stars, life could not exist. |
No. Death and life are two sides
of the same coin. After all, if life
didn’t exist, then nothing would die.
And if death wasn’t real, then evolution could not have produced the
life we have today. Death and life are
intimately intertwined, like the two sides of the DNA molecule. Life and death are two dancers that together
have spun out our world, both of which are needed for us to exist. The opposite of death isn’t life, but
sterility – like a barren, rocky planet with no life…. and hence no death. A natural death is a wonderful, necessary,
and healthy part of any world able to grow and change. Death is part of a life well lived.
That’s the view that my Naturalistic Paganism gives me – and it’s hard
for many people to see. Heck, it was
hard for *me* to see at first. Why?
Perhaps this is because nearly all of us have been taught the Christian
view of death from an early age. It
pervades our culture, showing up in our actions, our daily speech, what we can
say out loud, our movies, words, advertisements, and so on. In Christianity, death is the enemy (not just
an enemy, but THE enemy). Death is evil,
unnatural, unnecessary – an abrogation of the divine plan, a cosmic
mistake. Death is portrayed as the
opposite of life – as if Life and Death were two cosmic deities battling
through the ages, each hoping to rule the Universe alone after the other is
killed. Death is seen in such negative
ways that many people cannot even speak about it – they use euphemisms like
“passed away” and “asleep”, and so many people in our culture are unable face
reality enough to make the most basic and necessary preparations for death – such
as a will. The various Bibles are clear on
this view of death, in dozens of verses.
Death as the enemy is extolled in sermons, blogs, and discussions in
churches across our world every Sunday.
You can see this easily by googling “death, enemy, Christian” or any
similar string.
But why? Where did this adversarial
view come from? Well, a full examination
would be too long for a blog post, but the Christian view of course largely grew
from the earlier Greek views which had an afterlife of comparative misery for
everyone, making death a bad thing. With
some Hebrew influence, Christianity greatly amplified that distaste, becoming
persuasive with a terrible threat such as a hell, along with a blissful
promise, convincing people to join.
Taking a wider view, human cultures have often considered death a
transition to an afterlife, but that doesn’t necessarily make death an enemy or
an unnatural thing. These afterlives
were often as good as or better than real life, such as many of the ancient
Asian views of the afterlife, where the afterlife mirrored a normal life, or included
reincarnation – where the afterlife actually was another life on earth itself. Ancient views of death often viewed it as a
normal and natural change, be that karmic or otherworldly. Buddhism, in fact, reminds us not to think of
our life as if it were permanent because everything changes, and that death is
simply another change, like all the other change in our Universe. In this way, we can each remember that the
joy of hugging a child cannot last – that the child will grow to an adult –
ceasing to exist as a child, and that fact is a good thing. At the same time, Buddhism seeks an escape
from both death & life – instead of embracing both. (some
sources – among many others – are below).
Just as many of these views saw death as a normal part of the real
world, my Naturalistic Paganism helps me see how necessary and healthy death
is. (And to be clear - I’m talking about
death itself. Yes, there are plenty of
examples of horrible deaths, such as untimely or unjust deaths. Those are horrible because they are unjust or
untimely, not simply because they are a death). Without death, our world could
not exist. Evolution itself works due to
the death of creatures and the death (extinction) of species (beautifully
included in the video “The Unbroken Thread”).
Here. Without the death of stars in supernovae, we wouldn’t have the elements
to make our Earth or life. Life all
around us survives by eating the dead bodies of other life, and the constant
recycling of the atoms of life on Earth requires death as part of the
cycle. You yourself kill uncountable
organisms every day, simply by being alive – even if you are vegan. What about a world without death? How would that work? Looking closely at any part of our Earth
shows how absurd a world without death would be. For instance, consider the elegant praying
mantis…..
A praying mantis female lays a capsule of hundreds of eggs each
summer. Now, without death, each of
those will grow to become an adult mantis, half of which are female (and you
wouldn’t want to be a mantis male)….
So using just 200 eggs, that means from one pregnant female we’d have 100
female mantises the next year, then 10,000 in two years, 1 million the year
after that, and so on. No big deal, right? I mean, we have hundreds of millions of
mantises around us on Earth now, after all.
However, at that rate the mantises would cover the Earth to a depth of one
mile by year 12, just 4 years later, the rapidly expanding mantis ball would
engulf our moon, and in the next year the squirming mass of mantises swallow
the Sun, with the rest of the solar system (including the far-flung Kuiper
belt) the year after that! This large amount of solid matter would have so much
gravity to then collapse into a black mantishole. Thank you death, for saving us from the
Mantisnova! Absurd? Of course!
And that same scenario plays out for any life on Earth, no matter how
slowly it reproduces. For every good
aspect of our world, we have death to thank. Any aspect of our lives becomes as
absurd as a mantisnova without death, and going through more of them would
lengthen this already long blog post.
However, perhaps there is time for one short story. Long ago, before the world was as it is
today, an old medicine woman here in Michigan died. For weeks after she was wrapped in birchbark
and buried, the village continued to mourn her death. The Great Spirit, Gitche
Manitou, and many other spirits saw this.
They came to the village, and asked to speak with the grandmothers. For days they talked with the grandmothers
about the secrets of the Universe, and the longhouse was filled with wisdom and
knowledge. The rest of the village
watched the smoke from the longhouse, and wondered what was being said. Finally, Gitche Manitou and the spirits
offered the grandmothers a choice between two great gifts. One gift was the gift of eternal life for all
people – no one would ever grow old and die.
The other was the gift of eventual death for all people. With death, there would need to be children,
but without death, there could be no children, because soon there would be no
room for them. The grandmothers saw that
the greatest gift was the gift of death, which they chose – and thus gave us
all the gift of children as well.
There is yet another important way that death fills my life with
meaning and joy. Death means that my
life is finite – that I’ve got around 17,344,882 minutes left to live. Each of those minutes is irreplaceable -
making each one a precious gift from my Ancestors to me. If not for death, then they would be
valueless. If I were going to live
forever, then why value an evening with friends? After all, if I was going to
spend an infinite number of evenings with them in an infinite afterlife, then
one such evening now is infinitely worthless.
But I know that’s a fantasy.
Every minute I have is a precious, irreplaceable treasure. That makes everything I do, every choice I
make, a sacred choice. It means that I
deeply value this blog post, or else I would have used the ~191 minutes in some
other way, because this blog post brought me ~191 minutes closer to death. It means that every moment spent with my
kids, my wife, my friends or anyone is an affirmation of how much they mean to
me. This helps me remember to keep my
priorities straight, to see the deep meaning in my life, and to enjoy the
moment – even when stuck in traffic.
So yes, the existence of death brings me great joy – because it brings
me our world. It brings me the joy of
children, the clean water and air, the preciousness of every moment I have
here. Death and Life are two sides of
the same wonderful coin, and so I celebrate death as much as I celebrate life.
Blessed be-
Jon Cleland Host
