This Sorrowful Life

Easter recently came and went and the day and the season remind us of many things, most notably suffering, death and salvation.

We know we are going to die and don't believe it.

We believe we are going to be saved and don't know it.

We both know and believe we are suffering...the curse of Adam and Eve...God damn them, and He did...to a life of suffering!

And us along with them. Ah...

This sorrowful life.

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A brief meditation on sorrow...


The Buddha claimed all life was sorrow. Birth and death each brought grief. Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, commanded one of Shakespeare’s characters. We poor humans recognize the omniscience of sorrow all too well, and we don’t like it. What to do?

Man has been trying desperately to avoid sorrow ever since Adam and Eve scurried past the angel with the flaming sword on their bum’s rush out of paradise...Aside from all too few moments of temporal bliss though, mankind’s efforts to detour sorrow down some black hole of earthly diversion have failed. Attempts to stifle the melancholy power of sorrow are ultimately doomed to failure. It’s the nature of the beast. Even in laughter, as Proverbs tells us, there is sorrow.

So, all life is sorrow. Once we accept that fact and decide not to waste time trying to push our sorrows down some black hole of temporary distractions, we can fashion an approach to deal with it. We can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse after all. We can transform sorrow from a debilitating emotion into a new way of dealing with reality.

Cervantes, the survivor of battlefield wounds and Moorish prisons and ever the pragmatist, reasoned that all sorrows are bearable, if there is bread. And there is bread, both of this world and beyond.
For the material minded, the bread - eventually - goes stale.
But...
For Christians, the bread of life is Jesus. Through Jesus, the sorrow that is life becomes the key to the joy which lies at the heart of salvation. -(God gives us sorrow that we may know joy.)-
We need but follow Jesus through His earthly journey to see the road map back to paradise that He has written into the heart of each and every one of us.
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Another sign of Easter season is the new life awakening all around us as the earth renews itself. I can smell the Spring grass and see the dogwood's pink blossoms and hear the chirping of baby birds. I can feel the soft warm breeze caress my bare neck and taste, yes taste, the hope that this season brings of new life and new possibilities.