I’ve harped on for years about the inevitability of death, and I can’t let it go. When I was four, I started Kindergarten at PS 127 on 7th Ave between 79th and 80th St in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but as my parents walked me down a long corridor, I felt it was something I wasn’t going to like. As I hesitated, they each held one of my hands and led me down the corridor. As my fear grew, my hesitation turned to outright resistance, but the harder I tried to break free, the tighter they held my hands. Finally, I was being dragged down the hall crying, kicking, and screaming into my first Kindergarten class. It was September 1959. Since my birthday was December 27th, I just made the cut-off to start at 4. Difficult for a four-year-old to be separated from both parents and left with complete strangers. But that’s life; it’s time to move on and graduate to something different. Even at such a young age, we have to be wrenched away from familiar security and thrown into the unknown, just one small painful transition of many more to come. Now, as my final transition approaches, I find myself being dragged kicking and screaming to the grave. This time, the grip is far tighter than my parents’ holding my arms. Now, there really is no escape. The slow but steady deterioration gets us all. Yet, I refuse to accept it quietly. I am a disciple of Dylan Thomas’ poem who refuses to “go gently” and continually “rages against the dying of the light.” I lack the Evangelical confidence of John Donne, who seems convinced that death is a mere momentary sleep before eternal life and the final death of Death itself. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44107/holy-sonnets-death-be-not-proud Yet, I am firmly convinced there is something else beyond this life. I’m full of contradictions, holding to a firm conviction of God’s sovereignty with serious doubts regarding Biblical inerrancy. A Paradox of very liberal views on salvation and very conservative moral values. Oh, wretchedly confused man that I am!
Sociologist Peter Berger talks about signs of transcendence—indications within humanity pointing to something “other,” something supernatural. One is the argument from play. When one is engaged in play, one separates from the serious world into a joyful and eternal universe. There is a suspension of time. “Even when adults play, they momentarily regain that feeling of deathlessness from childhood. Play constitutes a signal of transcendence—man’s intrinsic nature in play points beyond itself to a supernatural justification.”
I remember playing as a child, lost in these moments when the outside world faded away and time was lost to joy. Only to suddenly be jarred back into this world by the voice of my mother calling me home. Back into the present world of pain and suffering. But where was I during those moments of play, an imaginary world of make-believe, or a precursor of another world of no suffering, and joy that will not fade? The resiliency of childhood is incredible. On my first mission trip to Nicaragua, I vividly remember being shocked by the orphan kids playing in the yard, seemingly oblivious to their poverty. How could they be laughing with such joy amid their suffering? A team member asked a kid why she was limping, and she said flatly, “Ratones” (the rats nibble on our feet and night, leaving open sores) and went right on playing. I would repeatedly see it in my future mission trips: the ability for children to temporarily leave their suffering in play. As I grow older and death grows closer, I feel distant from that world of play, as if it is just a childhood fantasy with no significance beyond the momentary experience. Yet, I can’t help fighting against that feeling. I rage against death and hope that something more is waiting we pass into the void.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light