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OUR
SOULS STORE BEAUTY
8-31-08
In
1992 in my journal I wrote, "I saw a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly
outside my window today and soon was musing on its short life. I cannot
help but ask, "Why?" when I see something so beautiful destined to die
in such a short time.
I became silent and listened for some truth to help me understand and
accept the short life of the butterfly. These sentences came to me:
"Don't fret these short lives. You and all living creations have changed
form innumerable times yet you remain intact in your essence. You remain
intact through all the changes. I am that which preserves the beauty of
all your phases and stages and rolls it up into your essence and keeps
it intact forever. See the beauty of it all rolled up into the core of
your being and evolving through all the changes."
This brought great comfort to me. Not only that the beauty of the
butterfly is preserved and rolled into something that will remain a
thing of beauty forever but that all the beauty I behold and experience
in all the days of my life is somehow engrammed into my very soul.
My sister Norma's birthday was three days ago. She died at the age of
five. A picture of her hangs on the wall at my sister's house. I have
never seen a more gorgeous child. Again, I must ask why such a perfect
child lived such a brief life.
Mother was six months pregnant with me when Norma died. The doctor told
her she would lose me if she didn't stay away from the hospital where
Norma was dying with a strep infection of the blood. He told her she
would probably miscarry if she attended the funeral. Mom and Dad had
just moved to Chattanooga and all their kin were buried in Decatur,
Alabama so my Dad rode a train with the body to Decatur and went through
the horrendous rituals of burial alone. A few months ago I stood looking
at Norma's headstone and thanked my father for taking on so much grief
and pain so I would have a chance to be born.
He was a minister. How did he keep his faith through this avalanche of
pain?
Every year on the anniversary of her death when Dad came home from work
and sat down at the kitchen table, he or Mom would say something about
her death and they would both quietly sob. Those quiet sobs still break
my heart. The only two times I ever heard my strong father cry that way
was on the anniversary of Norma's death and the night his own mother
died with her head in his lap. It is one of my saddest memories.
I acknowledge I do not have the kind of faith they both had. I cannot
accept that old "will of God" line of comfort. But those words that came
to me when I pondered the death of the butterfly do give me comfort. And
my comfort is mainly in those words about "essence" and "form."
Our bodies are the forms we take to experience this dimension of being.
We tend to identify with them so profoundly that we miss the simple fact
that the reality of our being is in our essence or soul. The meaning of
the Biblical word "soul" is "the real self." My faith is that all the
beauty we ever apprehend is safely and securely stored away eternally in
our soul.
And so it is with all the loved ones we have lost. All the love we had
for them and still have for them is stored in their essence. And just
like my flowers that bloom again every year, they will bloom again in
our lives no matter how many times we change forms. We, too, will bloom
in their hearts forever and ever.
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