Recently I read a fascinating essay about resurrection. Actually, it was more about getting ready for death and resurrection. The story comes to us from Donna Shaper, but she was doing nothing more than sharing the sentiments of E.B. White who began his thoughts about his soon-to-die wife, Katherine. “There she was, calmly plotting the resurrection.” White is the author of the famous children’s book, Charlotte’s Web. This I knew, since my two girls loved that book.
What I would not have known is White’s wife, Katherine, was also a writer---the fiction editor for The New Yorker Magazine. Apparently, she was quite the formal woman. I enjoyed learning about her and letting her become my teacher. Shaper’s words described her, “She had a stately calm, a formality, a belief in the future, even if she herself was not going to be alive in it.” I began to picture a spunky woman who, indeed, could teach all of us.
I almost laughed out loud when I read that White’s wife “was known to garden wearing a business suit.” I guess this is what farm boys do when they read a line like this. I never wore a business suit on the tractor! With interest I read further. “She was a classic and behaved characteristically about life and death, eating and drinking, and she thought people should wear pumps in the garden.” A picture of a woman was emerging in my mind and she was someone I wanted to meet.
Shaper’s essay gets serious with this sentence. “If resurrection means anything, it is what Mr. White observed in his wife as a metaphor.” Now the focus is on resurrection. I was now fully engaged with the essay. I wanted to see what Katherine White would function as a metaphor for Easter. This simple sentence put me on the way. “While planting bulbs, she was calmly plotting resurrection.”
Shaper begins her commentary on White’s action of planting bulbs. She says, “Bulbs don't resurrect. Biologically, they find soil and water and do what they were scientifically ‘made’ to do.” I like how Shaper pursues her line of thinking. She comments, “The obvious thing that is wrong about being calm about resurrection is the way it implies death. Most people are not calm about either death or dying. We are instead terrified.” I cannot read this without myself beginning to think about death. I do think Shaper is correct. People tend to be terrified about death---especially our own. I see this in college students all the time.
Shaper goes into some detail as she depicts our human anxieties in the face of death. “We don't know how long it will take to die, or how much suffering will be involved. We don't know how our loved ones will do without us, or we without them — on whatever the ‘other side’ really is.” I resonate with all of this. And then calmly, Shaper brings us to another turning point in the essay.
Donna Shaper notes that Katherine “was a contrast to these legitimate anxieties.” “While actively dying, she planted bulbs, something many gardeners do in the late fall. You need to get them in just before the ground freezes hard…” Plant the bulbs and get ready for a cold, long winter. And then in the spring, the bulbs will emerge with a beauty that makes spring what it is. In their own way, the bulbs become metaphors for the death and resurrection, which the Christian community celebrate.
There is so much Shaper shares in the Katherine story. I want to leverage one more point. We are told that Katherine “imagined a future without her being in it. Instead of living as though the future stops when we do, she lived as though the plants she would not see bloom still mattered. She didn't see herself as the center of the universe. She saw the universe as centering her. She thought of eternity as her home. There was life before her, and there was life after her.”
I read this as a witness to an egoless death. That won’t be easy to achieve. Intellectually, we know we are not the center of the universe. But it is easy to think and live as if we are the center! I would like to get to the point where I can see the universe as centering me. Death certainly will do it. I would like to get there before I die. That way I can understand and, perhaps, appreciate the necessity of my death.
And maybe I can come to see eternity as my home. I am not even sure I know everything this means. But it is compelling and I am ready to learn it. There clearly will be life after me. If I am living egotistically, this makes me upset. If I can live as the universe centers me, I know the world will go on. And I can celebrate that fact. This can become a fresh, profound understanding. As Shaper would say, “The understanding of death is the beginning of a calm life.”
What I would not have known is White’s wife, Katherine, was also a writer---the fiction editor for The New Yorker Magazine. Apparently, she was quite the formal woman. I enjoyed learning about her and letting her become my teacher. Shaper’s words described her, “She had a stately calm, a formality, a belief in the future, even if she herself was not going to be alive in it.” I began to picture a spunky woman who, indeed, could teach all of us.
I almost laughed out loud when I read that White’s wife “was known to garden wearing a business suit.” I guess this is what farm boys do when they read a line like this. I never wore a business suit on the tractor! With interest I read further. “She was a classic and behaved characteristically about life and death, eating and drinking, and she thought people should wear pumps in the garden.” A picture of a woman was emerging in my mind and she was someone I wanted to meet.
Shaper’s essay gets serious with this sentence. “If resurrection means anything, it is what Mr. White observed in his wife as a metaphor.” Now the focus is on resurrection. I was now fully engaged with the essay. I wanted to see what Katherine White would function as a metaphor for Easter. This simple sentence put me on the way. “While planting bulbs, she was calmly plotting resurrection.”
Shaper begins her commentary on White’s action of planting bulbs. She says, “Bulbs don't resurrect. Biologically, they find soil and water and do what they were scientifically ‘made’ to do.” I like how Shaper pursues her line of thinking. She comments, “The obvious thing that is wrong about being calm about resurrection is the way it implies death. Most people are not calm about either death or dying. We are instead terrified.” I cannot read this without myself beginning to think about death. I do think Shaper is correct. People tend to be terrified about death---especially our own. I see this in college students all the time.
Shaper goes into some detail as she depicts our human anxieties in the face of death. “We don't know how long it will take to die, or how much suffering will be involved. We don't know how our loved ones will do without us, or we without them — on whatever the ‘other side’ really is.” I resonate with all of this. And then calmly, Shaper brings us to another turning point in the essay.
Donna Shaper notes that Katherine “was a contrast to these legitimate anxieties.” “While actively dying, she planted bulbs, something many gardeners do in the late fall. You need to get them in just before the ground freezes hard…” Plant the bulbs and get ready for a cold, long winter. And then in the spring, the bulbs will emerge with a beauty that makes spring what it is. In their own way, the bulbs become metaphors for the death and resurrection, which the Christian community celebrate.
There is so much Shaper shares in the Katherine story. I want to leverage one more point. We are told that Katherine “imagined a future without her being in it. Instead of living as though the future stops when we do, she lived as though the plants she would not see bloom still mattered. She didn't see herself as the center of the universe. She saw the universe as centering her. She thought of eternity as her home. There was life before her, and there was life after her.”
I read this as a witness to an egoless death. That won’t be easy to achieve. Intellectually, we know we are not the center of the universe. But it is easy to think and live as if we are the center! I would like to get to the point where I can see the universe as centering me. Death certainly will do it. I would like to get there before I die. That way I can understand and, perhaps, appreciate the necessity of my death.
And maybe I can come to see eternity as my home. I am not even sure I know everything this means. But it is compelling and I am ready to learn it. There clearly will be life after me. If I am living egotistically, this makes me upset. If I can live as the universe centers me, I know the world will go on. And I can celebrate that fact. This can become a fresh, profound understanding. As Shaper would say, “The understanding of death is the beginning of a calm life.”
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