To be called to the heights in prayer, however briefly, is to sense a new relationship with God beginning, and to be afraid. It is a definite summons within the summons of prayer itself. It is conversion-beyond-conversion. And when the summons comes, there is a real suspicion, all at once, that the ticket may be for a one-way ride.
Death is now the destination. While no particular number has been revealed, a number has nevertheless been assigned. We don't know the day or the hour. But there is momentum now, there is urgency. Life has a real term and time has to be dealt with.
Winter is no longer winter, a time of year to be gotten through with scarves and snow plows and mittens. It is winter carved more deeply into us because of all the winters that have gone before. Winter is more wintry--its special character etched by repetition.... Because we are older, we know winter: winter itself, shaped like no other thing.
And with time, the list of these uniquely shaped things grows. The intense, collective joy of a public celebration...or the heightened sorrow of some disaster.... There is a web of feeling and memory interconnecting things.... It is not a solitary but a collective memory of some keenly felt experience. The sharpening effect of time and reflection and recognition and recollection--all these together produce a heightening that is, by an odd, unanticipated twist, a hint of bliss.
Everything changes. The kaleidoscope picture of our experience is constantly shattered, dispersed, tiny beads of shape and color rearranging themselves into the next design. At moments in the company of another, and more than one, events make sense, have a pattern, somewhere. Then the image breaks once again. Yet we are conscious somehow that "it" which cannot be grasped or held constant is experience itself. And that experience, however painful, is God's sharing of God's reality, a gift from God's hand.
Now our understanding of Providence must change. Once we had thought Providence was what kept bad things from happening. A thousand would fall, and ten thousand, and not come nigh me. Now it is clear that we, too, are falling, dying, losing our grip, entering into the death-that-is-not....
Does it exist? Is it real or isn't it? Doesn't it seem that death must be tasted in order for us to say that it is not, and then, perhaps, we will already not be? .... And since he has already died our death for us, isn't it true that death no longer is and that we will not die? But isn't it also true that each of us who has been baptized into the Lord Jesus has been baptized into his death? And isn't his death--our chance to share it--the hope we are living for?
Emilie Griffin has written 15 books on the spiritual life. She continues to write about work and spirituality via The High Calling of Our Daily Work.