[Oe List ...] Earthrise @ 79

[Mary Kurian D'Souza]

Thank you, John.

Yes, I am learning about detachment and letting go.
Your reflection has hit at a time when I have found such thoughts to show
up in my mind.
Mary



On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 4:23 AM, Terry Bergdall via OE <
oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Much thanks, John. I always appreciate your reflections. Terry
>
> On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 4:47 PM, John Epps via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
>> *Earthrise @ 79*
>>
>> Recently we were returning from a trip to Kansas and stopped for lunch at
>> Denny’s in Limon, Colorado. We’d been watching storm clouds gathering on
>> the horizon and were hoping to make it home before they hit. As we were
>> leaving, I held the door for an obviously elderly couple – both were
>> white-haired, somewhat bent-over, and he had a cane. Walking was a chore
>> and pushing open the door would have taxed their capacities. They could
>> obviously use some help, so I pushed open the door and held it as they
>> struggled through. Then they uttered the words that still jar me: “Thank
>> you, sir.” “Sir?” Coming from them? I was taught to use that term to refer
>> to those older than I. That statement occasioned an interior rainstorm of
>> reflections, including lots of wind, rain, and some hail.
>>
>> Looking back over the last month, I’ve had more “sirs” thrown at me than
>> at my senior year at The Citadel. There it was earned, deserved, and
>> welcomed. Here it’s a surprising address heralding the onset of elder-ness
>> that I didn’t think I had earned (yet) or deserved, and certainly not
>> welcomed. There are plenty of signs, from the number of medications it
>> takes to keep going to the diminishing energy and frequent naps. But I have
>> ignored those as simply the afflictions of a young man with something gone
>> wrong (to use a phrase from JWM).
>>
>> Reality will not be denied. It breaks through our facades.
>>
>> This time it drove me to look at a work I’d heard about but never
>> examined: “On Holy Living and Dying” by Jeremy Taylor published in 1839 (a
>> century before my birth). I turned quickly to the section on Holy Dying.
>> Here’s an excerpt. “A person is a bubble…all the world is a storm, and
>> people rise up in their several generations…like bubbles descending from
>> nature and Providence; and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of
>> their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other
>> business in the world but to be born, that they may be able to die: others
>> float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear, and give
>> their place to others: and those that live longest in the face of the
>> waters, are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy; and being crushed
>> with the great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the change
>> not being great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing than
>> it was before. So is everyone….”
>>
>> This goes on for 10 pages with powerful images and the same message about
>> our relative insignificance in the cosmic scheme of things. Somehow, and I
>> don’t know how, I found this strangely comforting, and not unsettling as
>> one might assume. You just never know where wonder will break through, but
>> when it does, it’s well worth celebrating.
>>
>> John Epps
>>
>>
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