One of our first discussions was about death, about staring her in the face and seeing fiery,paradoxical life in her eyes. You told me that you did not know yourself upon tasting your mortality, but instead realized that you know nothing at all about your own being. The life that flashed before your eyes was not the life that had come before, but the life that would come after.
The Hebrew people had an odd way of telling stories, a foreign way of starting out from their final destination in order to more fully understand why they needed to return to it. In Genesis begins a story of God's Creation of the whole world and somewhere between Genesis and Revelation, the journey takes place. Ultimately, unstoppably, despite sin, death, and redemption, the story returns to Creation, to what we call New Creation in the Church, but which is really the same Creation, the place "In the Beginning." Only this time, we recognize it for what it is, for a beginning and end in itself. It's a conversation that God spoke into existence, in order that we may talk awhile with Him.
Death is Life's lover, a match made and a bargain struck in order that we may be blessed with conversation, so goodness may be made full. So, let's return again to our conversation; let's return time and time again. Let's walk back out to that mortal brink, to the edge of our Shalom. We'll pace the cliff's edge and see if we cannot begin to know something of ourselves from the journey.
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