Nothing Matters

      Our house in Seattle was cold but we were too afraid we wouldn’t be able to pay the power bill to turn up the heat. Our car broke down twice, each time costing thousands of dollars. We put this on credit cards and tightened the chains of debt. We added side jobs to our work at the Hardware Store. It was no match for the bleeding. There was no choice but to sell our trailer, the last vestige of our former life. A man and his wife arrived with a cashier’s check one Saturday afternoon, hooked the trailer to their pickup, and drove away. We swallowed hard as the tail lights disappeared around the corner.

I was sick of my stupid life. Another children’s nursery rhyme got stuck in my head. 

      Three blind mice, three blind mice 
      See how they run, see how they run
      They all ran after the farmer’s wife
      Who cut of their tales with a carving knife
      Have you ever seen such a sight in your life
      As three blind mice?

I spelled “tails” t-a-l-e-s. Every time I came to the happy ending, the Farmer’s Wife cut off my tale: getting married, graduating from seminary, becoming a pastor, having kids, building a house, becoming a professor. Each brought satisfaction but the feeling dissipated. Every end was a dead end. The Farmer’s Wife stood poised, scythe in hand, ready to cut off, not just my story, but my very life.   

I read Sapiens which gave a dark account of human origins—nothing at all like what I learned in Sunday School. To this I added The Sixth Extinction. It made the case that human beings are not God’s gift to the planet. We are more like a rat infestation. Infinite appetite has harnessed the power of technology to bring about a global extinction that is already underway and probably impossible to stop. The only consolation is that mass extinctions have occurred at least five times in the earth’s history. We may take it personally, but it’s business as usual for Mother Earth. 

I didn’t just read about the vanity of life. I was living it. I sat at home, quarantined by COVID, staring out a panoramic window at what should have been the Olympic Peninsula. In its place was a wall of smoke created by forest fires burning out of control up and down the west coast. Up the road in Bothell, my mother was dying a slow death of dementia. I went to see her, taking the long way since the West Seattle Bridge had collapsed. When I arrived, my parents were glued to the T.V., watching rioters storm the Capitol. The whole world was coming unglued. 

Despair was a frequent visitor and assumed the form of the second Specter. I named it Vanitas. Another nursery rhyme echoed through my head.

      Row, row, row you boat, gently down the stream
      Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream

“Merrily” was repeated four times, as if the author insisted on the point. There was no solution for Vanitas but there was a choice. I could wallow in despair because every moment came to an end or I could embrace the joy of living. 

I imagined myself as a child at the beach, laughing and making a sand castle with a friend. A grownup approached and poured cold water on our fun.

            “You kids are wasting your time. In an hour the tide will wash away everything you have built. ” 

            He was missing the point. We never assumed we were building an eternal fortress. Our castle, like all castles, was made of sand. We were leaning into the moment, finding glory in the day. Moments don’t last forever. Forever is in the moments. 

My life was like the feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump, floating this way and that, swept along by invisible forces. When one story came to an end, a new one began. There was no stopping this but I could celebrate the ride, just as the pleasure of music is not found by arriving at a final note but in the playing. The ending is not an enemy. It is an essential part of the music. Who wants to be trapped in the song that never ends?

Never-ending anything sounds terrible, even never-ending happiness. Maybe Adam and Eve weren’t expelled from the Garden. Maybe they escaped. And the problem wasn’t the damn snake. It was the damn Garden. Who could take another day in Paradise forever? 

For the next moment to be born, the present moment must die. I can’t uncouple the two but I do have a choice: I can mourn the loss or embrace the next moment. 

But what about death? What happens when I die? I don’t know. But I think it reasonable to suspect there is more, not less, than what I see. The Universe has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. However that may be, I refuse to live in anticipation of some make-believe future bliss. I’ll take my bliss here and now, playing this day with all my heart.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.