Now here,
As I set my sights to impossible heights—
To the Mother of all births,
The Father of all moments,
And the Genesis of all things—
Here, I become once again like a little child,
Awestruck and speechless before a sight
Of truly mythic proportions.
I search wildly, but still fail to see
The full majesty of what appears before me—
I try and try to stretch these eyes wide, but they begin to burn,
And I am forced to look with eyes half-closed as I stare into the Light of the World—
That blinding Light that first pierced the emptiness and opened the door for all the living.
I lean in my ear closer and closer
To the Still Small Voice that speaks in silence,
But so often am dumbfounded by what I hear there
When each word moves me like so many gentle waves sent by a sea of voices
Singing above, below, within, and around me all at once.
My senses are outmatched.
My mind fails to find words for what is well beyond conveying.
But face to face with this, the Mystery of All Origins, what is central becomes clear:
That the impossible has already been accomplished.
Staring into the silence, it gradually comes to light
That we have already been miraculously delivered once already
From that blank and terrifying nothingness on the day that we entered this world:
On the day of our very first birthday.
And so, what gives us any reason
To expect anything less miraculous in death?
Death, that “final” deep and daunting silence.
Ah, but isn’t it merely an echo
Of the same silence that receives us at the end of every day—
The same silence that we soon awake from after each night has passed?
And why should the last day be any different?
But this is still only a hopeful analogy.
What follows after our final breath
Is forever as mysterious and unknowable
As the Origin of all things.
No, there is no certainty to be found
When staring into the impenetrable, dark mystery
That surrounds us both before and after life.
But this much is certain:
That we are—
That life has been born miraculously
Where there might just as well have been only nothingness.
This moment that we stand in right now
Is irrefutable proof of that.
And so, we can be sure
That there is One who holds the reins
On both life and death
And that, on the other side of the curtain
That divides this world and the next,
There is One who is able to hear us and lift us
Out of any darkness and out of any pit.
The same Light of the World
That was spoken at the Genesis of all things,
And the same Light of the World
That sailed into the heart of despair and death
Only to rise up again with life eternal—
That Radiant Savior will be walking there
On the bridge that spans across time and eternity.
Oh God, at that crux—
At the crossroads of existence and nothingness,
Is there anyone who can stand before the shadow of death?—
Anyone who can come face to face with the object of all fear
Without becoming utterly defeated and overcome
By their own dire helplessness?
There, in that final passage
Where all certainty fails,
What else but hope can remain?
Naked and alone at the fulfillment of all tragedy,
What else but hope can call out
Like the cry of a newborn baby
For the Mother of all births
And the Father of all moments
To return and carry us
Into the arms of Everlasting Love?
In that awful place, what else but hope is able to reach out with all that is within us
To the mercy of the One who is able to catapult the helpless spirit
Out of deaths all-consuming darkness
Into the light of life eternal?
But we do not have to wait for eternity to arrive. It does not begin at the end of us.
No, this day is just as much a part of eternity as any,
And the same Immortal Word that spoke all things into existence
Speaks before, after, above, below, within, and around us here and now.
Yes, even now in this place,
The humble and child-like heart is already being fed
By the warmth and truth of that beautiful, deathless Light
That creates, pervades, and redeems
All things.
And in this way,
Little by little,
We may yet come to remember
That we are and have always been
Children of the Uncreated one.