In Mexico, there is a monument
Tall and proud
Six columns for six heroes
Who died rather than surrender
Los Niños Héroes

Niños because they were children
Still new to life
But they knew their moment of valiance
When it arrived.

In my neighborhood, in my city
I know people who are young no more
They are my elders,
Kind and gentle in their age
Beset with unseen enemies round about

Here is diabetes advancing
There is the stab of a stroke
Beyond is the cancer
Too close is the loss of balance
And the fall that comes after it

Legion is this army that advances
Veteran soldiers of disease and desuetude
Their allies may be contagious
But these soldiers can strike on their own
Such is their skill over the millennia

How do we choose to face them?
We cast about for our friends, our support
But they fall, too, to the relentless advance
Ultimately, we face them alone
We face the unseen enemies alone

We know not one of us gets out alive
We know not one of us escapes unscathed
There will be scars before we die
There will be nights of agony before we die
There will be all but death, ere we die

But life is no eruption of accidents
We chose to be here
We chose to make choices
We chose to face agonies and despairs
That we would know peace and joys

As long as we are rational,
As long as we can yet choose,
We choose how we face that unseen army alone
We choose how we come to terms with the victory of death
We choose how we endure the sting of the grave

I heard once the tale
Of a man, advanced in age,
Who knew he would die of stomach cancer
His son asked him what was the purpose of it
The elder replied, “The Lord needs valiant men.”

And so he took the final charge in his hospital bed
Without flinching, he did his last duty
He accepted his lot and dug into his soul
Finding the eternal courage to become one of
Los Héroes Mayores

Mayores because they are elders
Experienced in life
But they knew their moment of valiance
When it arrived.

The Chinese are right
About white
Being the color of death
It is pale, it is calm, it is pure stillness
White is the color of death

We do not speak enough about death
Less so than even sex, or madness, I warrant
And so we fear all the things we speak nothing of
For it is in speaking that we learn
It is in learning that we understand
It is in understanding that we come to terms
To peace
To forgive, as the French say

The snowscape in the first dawn after an evening shower
Before track or foot or car crosses it
We step out into it
Maybe laugh at our footprints made in the snow
It is cold, yes.
But it is quieter more than it is cold.
It is still, peaceful, quiet, and cold
It is the land of death, and we do not truly fear it

The caribou do not fear the land of death
They teach us as they eat
There is green beneath the snow
There is green beneath the snow

We talk much of spring, but we forget
Often
To remember that spring only follows winter
We forget
Often
That the green beneath the snow gives us spring
That the New Englander was right,
In strange aeons, even death dies

That stillness and quiet of a cold snowscape
We find peace in it
So it is in restful death
In death, we have a Sabbath, if we choose
A rest from our labors
A shelter from our cares
We make the choice to rest in death here in life
Failing to make that choice, then death is not stillness and quiet

Death can be the color of storms
Violent and lashing, alternating despairing rain and terrifying lightning
Thunder roaring and booming
Tornadoes lurk in the murk
Ready to spin and to smash and to make all in their paths
One with the Destroyer

Why would anyone choose a storm for death instead of a snowscape?
It is because they fear it, and they do not learn how to master it.
It is because they have pride, and they do not learn how to love one another.
They forget what the Jew taught us: Love God with all your might, mind and strength
And love your neighbor as you love yourself

Death is a hilltop in West Texas
Where the American taught us
Medicine is to be found
Where
Eagles circle above

Stillness and peace are there, as well, as the sun sets
And I hear nothing but the whispers of the spirits
Where the distance between their lips and my ears
Is made shorter in the peace and the stillness
Is made shorter in the wings of the eagle

Death is a moment in a hospital
Where a loved one nods and says, “It is time.”
Even then, as the frantic business of emergency rooms
Pours through the halls and intercoms
The loved one has a peaceful, if painful moment

What of those who choose death over life?
Do they find peaceful snows or hilltops?
Or raging storms of hellscape punishments?
My thought is this: if madness takes one to death,
It is no worse than cancer or heart attack or stroke:
The peace is in the person’s true choices
But if pride takes one to death,
If one cries out like the Roman about what a treasure is lost in one’s death,
The storm awaits.

Is there life after death?
The Austrian was right to reject that question.
We die, no question of that
And then the mortality ends.
The body dies, the spirit endures on
If there is resurrection or reincarnation,
None of those
None of those
Will extend this mortality one instant
Before birth
Or after death
But the spirit
The spirit does not draw breath, so it knows not mortality
I have spoken with the unborn and the deceased

How to speak with the dead and unborn?
Be someone the dead and unborn want to speak with
Be someone the dead and unborn are able to speak with

The dead wait for us
Those at peace are patient
Those in storms wait with agonies
But they all wait
We are all in between birth and death
The great movement of mortality
Pressing forward
The line of time
Forcing the direction,
Determining the destination

Death is the phone call too early in the morning
The news delivered only when we are sitting
The tragedy, the agony, the sudden cold emptiness
The tears that exhaust the eyes
The mournful haunting of memory ever after
Until we ourselves join with the dead

Death is the moment the body
No longer sustains the motion of the spirit
The spirit then departs
That which lacks integrity sufficient for
Breath of life

Death is neither success nor failure
It is neither good nor bad
It is inevitable, it is inescapable
It is foreordained, it is neither reward nor punishment
It is promised to us all
There is no need to hasten the day of its arrival
Be patient and enter the quiet of the wintry dawn, perhaps
Life is not a measure of how much we suffer
It is a measure of how much we love
It is a measure of how much we serve
And those who love and serve will know peace and calm
And those who love and serve not will know storm and stress

The Siberians are many: one of their tribes
Teaches we walk backwards into the future
We see only the past clearly
The future behind our backs as we walk backwards
We walk backwards towards death

Death is a Japanese garden
As winter rain falls
A spring awaits
But now, a peaceful rest

Is there a different form of life after death?
Ah, such is the stuff of what prophets speak
Which ones to heed?
If you love and serve, you will know
If you try to save your life, you will lose it
If you give freely, you will live as life should be lived
The breathless sleep but an interval between mortality
And that different form of life that perhaps comes to us
Love and serve, that is the key
Love and serve, you will be free to dream in the breathless sleep
Love and serve, and you will have peace before you have joy
Love and serve, and you will discover
Green beneath the snow

Well, as we make ready to change calendars, it’s good to take stock of the year behind us. Hopefully, you’ve got some time off to sit, think, reflect, and count blessings and other small victories of the past year. No worry for anything that might overshadow – we’re all overshadowed by things bigger than any of us. But, the shadow often breaks for a moment and some light lands on us, be it a friendly smile, a kind word, or a good friend. And the light lands on us whether we give or receive of those things.

For me, it’s Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It’s a grand thank-you to all the people on this forum for being a friend to me. A friend is not someone who agrees all the time. A friend is quite often someone that will never see eye-to-eye with you on some things, but is in full agreement that friendship is much, much more than that. Friendship is in sharing difficult news, it’s in providing a listening ear – or listening eye, if you’re online, and it’s in seeking out someone to share a laugh with you.

Thank you friends, and may we be together come the next time we collectively observe another trip around the sun.

The sun yields the floor to the clouds
Temperature falls, wind and drizzle
Remind the nose and ears there are seasons other than summer
The hemisphere tilts towards winter, towards snow,
Towards a quiet, dark blanket
Towards a stillness of thought

Time for a song to play while stepping on the damp leaves underfoot
A song about thinking about the year rolling to a close
A song about the life to spring forth in the future from the descending quiet
A quiet song, with motion underneath it all
A stirring beneath the bark as the hemisphere has its afternoon nap

It’s raining a little, so why not cry a few tears of thanksgiving?
Why not smile beneath the scarf?
Why not oil the heart with gratitude as the cheeks get wet?
It is cold, but I have warmth
I have love
I have forgiveness
I have hope
These are worth tears, worth the thanksgiving
These are worth a humble accounting
Here as the hemisphere spins ’round a darkened pole
There is a light within, sustaining

The cold outside is part of life
Therefore, I am thankful for that cold, that pain
Life is life
The lichen under the rock
The bear in the cave
The frog in the mud
Time for that song, the damp leaves song
The thankful song
The quiet, peaceful, grateful song.

Sometimes, my wife sleeps in on Saturday mornings. I know that she can have trouble sleeping some nights, so I like to do quiet things that allow her to keep sleeping. This is one of those times.

Today, I’ve got my headphones on and I’m playing through songs that remind me of her. It’s not hard to do, since just about any love song can make me think of her, even if the words have nothing to do with our situation. It’s the passion in the music, I guess.

But I do love her. I woke this morning and gave thanks for a catalog of wonderment she’s brought to my life, and I know it’s not a complete list.

I’m going to listen to another song, and she’ll be in it, smiling back at me between the notes.

As I read more about Rabbi Kalonymous Shapira, who served as a rabbi in the Warsaw Ghetto during the years of Nazi occupation, “The Years of Wrath”, I arrive at his thoughts regarding the connections between spirituality and suffering. This is a man who was forced to experience not just a depth of human suffering, but, as he put it, a depth within a depth. I would do well to pay close attention to what he has to teach.

To begin with, he makes the connection between hearing or reading about suffering and actually experiencing it. The two are completely different. This I know from my own experience, so I know that the kinds of suffering I have not endured are academic only to me. Nevertheless, those who endure those sufferings can describe methods they used to cope with it. Should I face that suffering, I can rely upon their teaching in order to pass through it myself, with my soul and identity intact.

I know this because of how I used those methods and teachings to help me through my times of deep loss and crisis. When Rabbi Shapira speaks about areas of his sufferings in common with my experience and how he worked through them, I find that what worked for me also worked for him. So, when he speaks of areas where I do not have common experience with him, I trust in what worked for him. Heaven forbid, should I have to endure such things as he did, I will strive to endure them in the way he endured them.

While there are discussions about how sufferings can make us more spiritual once we have finished with that suffering and can reflect upon it, a sort of reflection upon answered prayers and tiny miracles, what do we do when our prayers for deliverance are answered with deeper suffering, the depth within the depth? What do we do when we think we can go no further, and then the road before us appears to be longer than we think we can survive? What do we do, to put it in raw setting, when we find ourselves in the Warsaw Ghetto on the eve of its liquidation, after having passed through plagues of Typhus, starvation on rations of a hundred calories a day, brutal murders in plain sight, horrors of the unrestrained and unfiltered brutality and hatred expressed by the Nazis? What do we do?

Rabbi Shapira’s answer is that we not consider the worldly end of the suffering. He turned to the martyrdom of Akiva, which happened in the Roman persecutions after the Bar Kochba revolt: Akiva said that he had always been willing to give his life for God – why should he turn away when that moment actually arrives?

More than that, Rabbi Shapira wrestled with questions about the existence of evil. While some have felt that evil is incompatible with the idea of a just and loving God, or even a God at all, Rabbi Shapira passed through that very evil and was able to state that evil did not matter. There is still a God, and it matters not what choices others may have made: those choices and their horrific impact do not negate or invalidate the existence of God. Nor do they invalidate the existence of a just and loving God. He is who he is, and we await the day of His judgment.

Rabbi Shapira taught that as persecution deepens, we must ourselves deepen our study and commitment to God. He noted that such deepening of study and commitment was next to impossible, especially as the repeated atrocities numbed the soul. It was to fight against that numbness that he encouraged the study and the commitment. Who is left to save if the body has become just a shell for the inner organs, the spirit within having perished from the psychic battering of repeated, unrelenting horrors?

No, we read more, we pray more, we make our observances more. We must fight that darkness that seeks to encompass us, in our depths within our depths. Even if we know we are to go to our deaths, we go to our death with our soul intact.

Will I go through such things as Rabbi Shapira endured? Maybe. I’m a member of a religious minority in a nation flirting with fascism. Such things could come to pass, where I cry out for rescue and deliverance, only to be faced with depth within depth of suffering. But if I can cry out from a depth, I can cry out from the depths, but I must prepare myself now, that I might have the spirituality developed in a time of peace to draw upon during years of wrath.

Spirituality does not end suffering. It does not mitigate the pain. It can, in fact, sharpen the pain and make us more aware of what we are enduring. But it does give us a path to draw ourselves up to face that suffering with dignity and faith. It gives us the ability to be patient and long-suffering. It gives us the ability to see to the eventual end of that suffering, even if it is in a day that comes after our own physical death. As long as we go to our death with our spirits still alive in faith, we are victorious over that suffering.

I believe in God, and I trust Him to be just and loving. I have had too many spiritual experiences in my life to believe otherwise. Yes, I have lost a son in a senseless tragedy. But my faith teaches me where he is, who he is with, and how to get there. Why should I refrain from finding joy in God’s mercy, even when I endure such a depth? Even so, if I am plunged into a depth within a depth, why should I be any less of a man than Rabbi Shapira or even Akiva? Their example, their wisdom, and their teaching, may that all be part of my life and how I endure all things.

Often, I see people that claim to have a belief in something, but then go on to undermine the ability of others to share in that belief because these people are too strident or over-the-top in trying to present their views. To them, things are so crystal clear: what could be wrong with someone that does not agree completely with their views? Are they ignorant? Or are they willful enemies?

By leaving out the ability of others to judge things differently, which I call spiritual immaturity, such people are prone to hardline views, are less able to forgive, are more likely to use contentious or confrontational language and, ultimately, commit acts of violence. They will do these things, all the while believing that they are in the right and are justified in their actions.

Spiritual maturity, on the other hand, allows one to accept that other people will walk other paths. Indeed, that each person walks a unique path, some in a similar direction, others not. A spiritually mature person would hope to influence the path of another, but will also recognize when such influence is either unwanted or won’t be understood, or both – and then, in such cases, to refrain from attempting such influence.

Sadly, the spiritually immature can see this maturity as a threat to their own narrow views and lash out against it as heresy, putting it on the same level as their paranoid reactions towards supposed enemies outside their faith. To the immature, the mature can seem as traitors from within because they will not join in crusades or other acts of forcible conversion. Rather, they live and let live and somehow seem to allow evil to flourish.

In truth, it is the mature person that is not allowing evil to color his or her actions and pervert his or her beliefs.

I’ve been the immature person before, thinking that standing my ground in a heated argument lasting for hours was a sort of victory. In truth, it was all wasted words, as I did not convince the others of my views and served only to make them more ready to disagree with anything I proffered in the future. I’ve been that way about my religion, my politics, my views on music, my tastes in arts, and so many other subjective areas. It’s taken me many years to develop the ability to let others have the last word, even when it contradicts what I’ve been trying to say. It’s a sort of long game for me, because if I’m known to let others have a fair say, then I’m more likely to be listened to in the future by those I disagree with. And, maybe in that future day, my arguments might find their way into the hearts and minds of those others that disagree with me today.

Perhaps this is why I’m drawn to teachings of live and let live that are common among Daoist philosophers, Zhuangzi in particular. Perhaps this is why I see value in the Zen koans. While I myself am neither Daoist or Buddhist, I find a sympathetic maturity in their sentiments, in the way they serve to remove masks and illusions that so often bedevil our views, and then allow us to better penetrate the darkness between our souls and enlightenment.

We Are Sikhs

I have many friends who are Sikh and many more co-workers of that faith. If you know anything of the history of that faith, you know that they share many ideals with Americans. Read about them, get to know about them, and discover something beautiful in the world.

I know that being a good person is not a contest, but I also know that the actions of others can serve to inspire. There are some things that I’ve known Sikhs to do regularly that make me want to work harder to help other people that I know. Thank you for the inspiration, Sikhs.

So, one day, I’m going to die. No big surprise in the statement, although there may be surprise in the event thereof. But I know that following my death, there will be a time of spirituality – literally – and then a restoration of life. In that restoration, good will be restored to good and evil will be restored to evil.

I know that I will have life restored to me. How I live in this life will determine what accompanies that restoration of life.