One Of These Days1
Sermon
Rejoicing In Life's 'Melissa Moments'
The Joys Of Faith And The Challenges Of Life
It was not what he said. It was that he said it at the right moment that made a remark of Marvin Brown stand out in my memory for more than 45 years. What he said was obvious. Saying it when he did made an indelible impression on me. The scene was a Baptist church in a small Georgia town. As the presiding minister I was leading a funeral procession to the church cemetery. Marvin Brown was one of the pallbearers carrying the body of a long-time resident of that little town to his final resting place. We walked in silence. The only sounds were the noise of our feet upon the grass and the din of traffic on the Atlanta highway in the distance. As we walked along, the silence was broken by the voice of Marvin Brown. He said, "You know, every one of us will have to make this journey one of these days." The silence returned. We walked on toward the grave.
When my children were little, we were in Georgia. While we were there, we went to visit my wife's aunt who was in a nursing home. It was a sad and distressing sight to see her. She could hardly walk. She could hardly speak. Gone was the sparkle in her eyes. Gone was the crispness in her voice. It hardly seemed like the same person. All around her were other women in various states of disintegration. Two sat playing cards. Another sat silently at a table alone. Another cried out for a nurse to come wash her face. Still another babbled incoherently. The smell in the air was evidence that someone's diaper had just been changed. Some old woman who had once changed diapers on her own children was now herself reduced to the dependency of babyhood. Hands that had cared for others were feeble and trembling now. Bodies that had once been young and strong and healthy were withering away. The flowers were fading. It was like every nursing home you have ever been in. More recently three of my aunts, more than one cousin, and other relatives have lived their last days in a nursing home that became very familiar to me. Still later, with much reluctance, one sad day I took my mother and father to that same institution. My dad died five months later. As of this writing early in 2001, my mother is still there, gradually weakening.
The nursing home I refer to was just around the corner from the house where my parents lived for 37 years before they got too old to live alone any longer. One day a car stopped in their driveway. The driver came to the door and asked for directions to this very nursing home nearby. In the back seat was a thin, little, grey-haired old woman looking very frightened. We knew where she and that car were heading. My Aunt Rosalie said, after she was a resident there, "A nursing home is where you go to wait to die."
Again and again I have thought of Marvin Brown and of the journey that we must all take one of these days.
Yet it is not such observations as this that are the clearest reminders of our mortality. Our most intimate knowledge of the certainty of death comes in those moments now and then when without warning the fact that we are going to die hits us sharply in the gut. A wave of acute anxiety rips through us like a jagged knife. We are shaken with the startling clarity that Marvin Brown's observation applies to us. One day we will cease to be.
The fact of death needs not be established with proof for it is our most certain knowledge. The Psalmist was right. We are like grass. For a time it flourishes. Then the wind blows over the place, and it is no more. What shall we do with the inevitable fact of our dying? Should our attention be focused on the question of what happens after we die? That is an important matter for another time. For this occasion I want to focus on the implication of the fact of our dying some day for the here and now. What does it mean for our daily living that one of these days we will take that journey?
I wish to make two very simple points. A certain obviousness hovers about both of them. Nevertheless, I dare say that if you, if I, took them seriously, our lives might be very different from now on. If every day each of us could manage to accomplish two simple goals, the quality of our lives would be greatly improved. Having made that bold claim, let me proceed.
In the first place, the fact that we will die sometime enhances the value of our common experience every day. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that the greatest evil in life is that time is "perpetual perishing." What he meant is that life is made up of a series of moments which come to be and pass away. The farther we move away from an experience, the dimmer it gets. The zest and freshness and vividness fade away until only a shadow of the past remains. We cannot possess any joy or pleasure forever. Time is "perpetual perishing." No matter how vivid the experience, the reality of the moment cannot be held before the imagination for all time in all its fullness and intensity. Inevitably the passing days gradually erode the memory. It slips gradually into the dim recesses of the past. Never again will it live in the completeness and vividness of its immediate reality. Yes, the sad truth is that time is "perpetual perishing." We cannot possess the joy of any moment forever. It fades away.
As true as that is, I do not agree with the great philosopher that this is the greatest evil. There is a greater evil I believe. It is true that I cannot remember today with the same intensity and vividness how the pecan pie I ate last week tasted at the moment. That exquisite flavor I enjoyed then cannot be recaptured now. Each passing day there is a loss that cannot be recovered. What is sadder still, however, is that there will come a time in which there will be no pecan pie in my future. Whitehead was wrong. The greatest evil is not that memories of previous pleasures fade. The greater evil is that a time comes when they can no longer be repeated. I can live with the fading memory of how pecan pie tasted last week, if I can enjoy that marvelous delight again next week. One day for me, for all of us, there will be no more future, no more expectation that the joys we have known can be repeated anymore on this earth.
What does death mean anyway? It means that we cease to have a future. Every year the faculty of the seminary gathered for commencement. When we were taking off our robes after the occasion, someone was likely to say, "Well, one more, and one less!" And so it is with every joy, with every satisfaction, every positive experience we have. Every day we live means one more, and one less.
So the passing of time brings a double evil. It fades the memory of yesterday's pleasures and reduces the number of tomorrows in which they may be repeated. Hence, I say that the fact of our dying one day enhances the value of every present moment. It makes every minute precious. It makes every opportunity count. It makes every new experience a joy to be savored to the fullest. Life is now. Life is today. Enjoy it to the fullest and in all its robust flavor. Take it in all its richness, its fullness, and completeness: the sight of a sunset, a game of Frisbeeª, the sound of a waterfall, the touch of a lover's caress, the taste of honey, the comforting word of a friend, the laughter of a child at play, the melody of your favorite song, the beauty of the grandest music. All the variety of the everyday simple pleasures takes on a new intensity and value when we experience them in the knowledge that time is "perpetual perishing." Time finally sweeps all before it like the wind takes away the flower that blooms and fades and is no more.
There is a moving passage in Thornton Wilder's play Our Town that makes the point in a vivid way. Emily, who had died, is given a chance to go back and live one day of her life over again. She chooses her twelfth birthday. What impresses Emily most as she appears in her mother's kitchen is how much there is to life. She suddenly realizes how sweet and precious are all the simple things, the ordinary sights and sounds and smells of everyday life -- a ticking clock, coffee, hot baths, newly-ironed dresses, sleeping and waking up. It all goes so fast, and we miss so much of it without ever knowing it. She concludes, "And oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?" The Stage Manager replies, "No, the saints and poets, maybe -- they do some."2
Well, we cannot all be saints and poets. We can try to live every day in the awareness that one day we must take that journey of which Marvin Brown spoke. If we can, maybe everyday life will take on more meaning. The ordinary things will be more precious. We will realize more of life than we ordinarily do.
I have not lived in Georgia since I was 31 years of age. I have now passed my seventy-first birthday. It has always been my hope and plan to return to the state of my birth to live out my last years. One of many reasons is that I carry memories of small sights, sounds, and feelings from my childhood. I would like to experience them again day by day and not just on those brief visits back. I think immediately of the feel of a clear, cold January night with the stars shining brightly, the feel of a crisp morning in March when Spring is already pushing the winter away, the sight of azaleas in nearly every yard in April, the sweet aroma of honeysuckle, the smell of hickory smoke from a fireplace in December, the sound of the wind sweeping through a grove of pine trees, the mingled chorus of the songs of a thousand insects on an August night punctuated by the croaking of frogs, the taste of old-fashioned pork barbecue, and on and on.
If I ever live there again, I know that those simple delights of the senses will be ever more meaningful because of the awareness that time grows short for their enjoyment. If we are wise, we will all begin now to savor the little things that make us happy before we all have to take the journey of which Marvin Brown spoke.
The second point is as simple as the first. It is this. The knowledge that one day we will die magnifies the importance of making decisions now. Today is opportunity day. Today is decision time. Life is full of choices. Every day we come to points in the road where there is a divide. We can only go one way. We have to choose. And then there are those more important turning points, those tougher choices that stay with us a while. We are tempted to postpone, to put off until tomorrow. Meanwhile, life goes on. We drift. The opportunity is gone. Everyone's list will be different. All of us have before us now choices that affect our lives, decisions we need to make and make now. The time has come to stop smoking, to begin exercising, to start a diet, to quit a job, to do a better job of what we are now doing, to propose a marriage, to end a marriage, to improve a marriage, to write a letter home, to break a bad habit, to make reconciliation with an estranged friend, to get angry with a friend who is bugging you, to break out of depression and passivity and take charge of our lives in some responsible way, to do something for the sake of justice in the world, for the burdened to stop acting like they are Atlas with the world on their shoulders and to throw the burden off, for the careless and irresponsible to pick up some of the burden, and on and on the list could go.
Each of us will have to complete the list for herself or himself. The implication is clear: whatever turning point you face -- decide now, decide today, do it.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not urging impulsive or irresponsible plunging forward without thought. President Gorbachev quoted an old Russian proverb: "Measure seven times; cut only once." A bundle of wisdom lies hidden in the aphorism that we should look before we leap. Yes, but what about those of us who have come to the ditch and looked and backed away? We have summoned our courage and come back and looked longer. Then we back away again. What about those of us who have looked and looked and looked and looked and looked but have never leaped? Of course, we should consider alternatives carefully and use our reason and experience and the counsel of others as best we can. Finally, there comes a time to quit looking and start leaping. At last, there comes a moment to make a choice and live with it. The alternative is to drift our lives away in indecision and passivity. Opportunity knocks once, and sometimes twice or even maybe three times. It does not knock forever. So decide. Decide today.
The Psalmist contrasts the transitoriness of human life with the everlasting love of God. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount contrasts the anxious fretting about food, drink, and clothing with the possibility of living trustfully before God. The Psalmist points us to the love of God. Jesus points us to the Commonwealth of God. He urges us to believe that if we set our minds first on God's providential care, we can live a day at a time without worrying about tomorrow. With that kind of faith we can live each moment, each hour, each day to the fullest as we approach that final journey which we all must make.
Some years ago I was in Georgia visiting my parents. One afternoon we decided to ride over to the little church where I had been pastor. When we got there, I said, "Let's go by the cemetery. That's one way of catching up on some of the news." So we did. I walked from grave to grave. Here and there I saw the name of some person who had been an active member of the church 25 years ago. I paused a minute to remember each of them. Then one grave caught my eye in a special way. I read the words on the stone.
Marvin Brown
February 17, 1971
I remembered once again the words he had spoken not many yards from where I now stood looking at his grave. Marvin Brown had taken his journey.
While there is still time, let us begin to enjoy the ordinary pleasures of every day. While there is still time, let us make the decisions that life requires. We are all now many years closer to the journey that we all must take than we were when Marvin Brown was carried to his final resting place. So let us live to the fullest, beginning now -- while there is still time.
____________
1. An earlier version of this sermon was published in Pulpit Digest (May-June 1981), pp. 21-24. Reprinted with permission from Pulpit Digest, copyright Logos Productions Inc. (800-328-0200).
2. Thornton Wilder, Our Town (New York: Coward McCann, Inc., 1938), pp. 124-125.
When my children were little, we were in Georgia. While we were there, we went to visit my wife's aunt who was in a nursing home. It was a sad and distressing sight to see her. She could hardly walk. She could hardly speak. Gone was the sparkle in her eyes. Gone was the crispness in her voice. It hardly seemed like the same person. All around her were other women in various states of disintegration. Two sat playing cards. Another sat silently at a table alone. Another cried out for a nurse to come wash her face. Still another babbled incoherently. The smell in the air was evidence that someone's diaper had just been changed. Some old woman who had once changed diapers on her own children was now herself reduced to the dependency of babyhood. Hands that had cared for others were feeble and trembling now. Bodies that had once been young and strong and healthy were withering away. The flowers were fading. It was like every nursing home you have ever been in. More recently three of my aunts, more than one cousin, and other relatives have lived their last days in a nursing home that became very familiar to me. Still later, with much reluctance, one sad day I took my mother and father to that same institution. My dad died five months later. As of this writing early in 2001, my mother is still there, gradually weakening.
The nursing home I refer to was just around the corner from the house where my parents lived for 37 years before they got too old to live alone any longer. One day a car stopped in their driveway. The driver came to the door and asked for directions to this very nursing home nearby. In the back seat was a thin, little, grey-haired old woman looking very frightened. We knew where she and that car were heading. My Aunt Rosalie said, after she was a resident there, "A nursing home is where you go to wait to die."
Again and again I have thought of Marvin Brown and of the journey that we must all take one of these days.
Yet it is not such observations as this that are the clearest reminders of our mortality. Our most intimate knowledge of the certainty of death comes in those moments now and then when without warning the fact that we are going to die hits us sharply in the gut. A wave of acute anxiety rips through us like a jagged knife. We are shaken with the startling clarity that Marvin Brown's observation applies to us. One day we will cease to be.
The fact of death needs not be established with proof for it is our most certain knowledge. The Psalmist was right. We are like grass. For a time it flourishes. Then the wind blows over the place, and it is no more. What shall we do with the inevitable fact of our dying? Should our attention be focused on the question of what happens after we die? That is an important matter for another time. For this occasion I want to focus on the implication of the fact of our dying some day for the here and now. What does it mean for our daily living that one of these days we will take that journey?
I wish to make two very simple points. A certain obviousness hovers about both of them. Nevertheless, I dare say that if you, if I, took them seriously, our lives might be very different from now on. If every day each of us could manage to accomplish two simple goals, the quality of our lives would be greatly improved. Having made that bold claim, let me proceed.
In the first place, the fact that we will die sometime enhances the value of our common experience every day. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that the greatest evil in life is that time is "perpetual perishing." What he meant is that life is made up of a series of moments which come to be and pass away. The farther we move away from an experience, the dimmer it gets. The zest and freshness and vividness fade away until only a shadow of the past remains. We cannot possess any joy or pleasure forever. Time is "perpetual perishing." No matter how vivid the experience, the reality of the moment cannot be held before the imagination for all time in all its fullness and intensity. Inevitably the passing days gradually erode the memory. It slips gradually into the dim recesses of the past. Never again will it live in the completeness and vividness of its immediate reality. Yes, the sad truth is that time is "perpetual perishing." We cannot possess the joy of any moment forever. It fades away.
As true as that is, I do not agree with the great philosopher that this is the greatest evil. There is a greater evil I believe. It is true that I cannot remember today with the same intensity and vividness how the pecan pie I ate last week tasted at the moment. That exquisite flavor I enjoyed then cannot be recaptured now. Each passing day there is a loss that cannot be recovered. What is sadder still, however, is that there will come a time in which there will be no pecan pie in my future. Whitehead was wrong. The greatest evil is not that memories of previous pleasures fade. The greater evil is that a time comes when they can no longer be repeated. I can live with the fading memory of how pecan pie tasted last week, if I can enjoy that marvelous delight again next week. One day for me, for all of us, there will be no more future, no more expectation that the joys we have known can be repeated anymore on this earth.
What does death mean anyway? It means that we cease to have a future. Every year the faculty of the seminary gathered for commencement. When we were taking off our robes after the occasion, someone was likely to say, "Well, one more, and one less!" And so it is with every joy, with every satisfaction, every positive experience we have. Every day we live means one more, and one less.
So the passing of time brings a double evil. It fades the memory of yesterday's pleasures and reduces the number of tomorrows in which they may be repeated. Hence, I say that the fact of our dying one day enhances the value of every present moment. It makes every minute precious. It makes every opportunity count. It makes every new experience a joy to be savored to the fullest. Life is now. Life is today. Enjoy it to the fullest and in all its robust flavor. Take it in all its richness, its fullness, and completeness: the sight of a sunset, a game of Frisbeeª, the sound of a waterfall, the touch of a lover's caress, the taste of honey, the comforting word of a friend, the laughter of a child at play, the melody of your favorite song, the beauty of the grandest music. All the variety of the everyday simple pleasures takes on a new intensity and value when we experience them in the knowledge that time is "perpetual perishing." Time finally sweeps all before it like the wind takes away the flower that blooms and fades and is no more.
There is a moving passage in Thornton Wilder's play Our Town that makes the point in a vivid way. Emily, who had died, is given a chance to go back and live one day of her life over again. She chooses her twelfth birthday. What impresses Emily most as she appears in her mother's kitchen is how much there is to life. She suddenly realizes how sweet and precious are all the simple things, the ordinary sights and sounds and smells of everyday life -- a ticking clock, coffee, hot baths, newly-ironed dresses, sleeping and waking up. It all goes so fast, and we miss so much of it without ever knowing it. She concludes, "And oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?" The Stage Manager replies, "No, the saints and poets, maybe -- they do some."2
Well, we cannot all be saints and poets. We can try to live every day in the awareness that one day we must take that journey of which Marvin Brown spoke. If we can, maybe everyday life will take on more meaning. The ordinary things will be more precious. We will realize more of life than we ordinarily do.
I have not lived in Georgia since I was 31 years of age. I have now passed my seventy-first birthday. It has always been my hope and plan to return to the state of my birth to live out my last years. One of many reasons is that I carry memories of small sights, sounds, and feelings from my childhood. I would like to experience them again day by day and not just on those brief visits back. I think immediately of the feel of a clear, cold January night with the stars shining brightly, the feel of a crisp morning in March when Spring is already pushing the winter away, the sight of azaleas in nearly every yard in April, the sweet aroma of honeysuckle, the smell of hickory smoke from a fireplace in December, the sound of the wind sweeping through a grove of pine trees, the mingled chorus of the songs of a thousand insects on an August night punctuated by the croaking of frogs, the taste of old-fashioned pork barbecue, and on and on.
If I ever live there again, I know that those simple delights of the senses will be ever more meaningful because of the awareness that time grows short for their enjoyment. If we are wise, we will all begin now to savor the little things that make us happy before we all have to take the journey of which Marvin Brown spoke.
The second point is as simple as the first. It is this. The knowledge that one day we will die magnifies the importance of making decisions now. Today is opportunity day. Today is decision time. Life is full of choices. Every day we come to points in the road where there is a divide. We can only go one way. We have to choose. And then there are those more important turning points, those tougher choices that stay with us a while. We are tempted to postpone, to put off until tomorrow. Meanwhile, life goes on. We drift. The opportunity is gone. Everyone's list will be different. All of us have before us now choices that affect our lives, decisions we need to make and make now. The time has come to stop smoking, to begin exercising, to start a diet, to quit a job, to do a better job of what we are now doing, to propose a marriage, to end a marriage, to improve a marriage, to write a letter home, to break a bad habit, to make reconciliation with an estranged friend, to get angry with a friend who is bugging you, to break out of depression and passivity and take charge of our lives in some responsible way, to do something for the sake of justice in the world, for the burdened to stop acting like they are Atlas with the world on their shoulders and to throw the burden off, for the careless and irresponsible to pick up some of the burden, and on and on the list could go.
Each of us will have to complete the list for herself or himself. The implication is clear: whatever turning point you face -- decide now, decide today, do it.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not urging impulsive or irresponsible plunging forward without thought. President Gorbachev quoted an old Russian proverb: "Measure seven times; cut only once." A bundle of wisdom lies hidden in the aphorism that we should look before we leap. Yes, but what about those of us who have come to the ditch and looked and backed away? We have summoned our courage and come back and looked longer. Then we back away again. What about those of us who have looked and looked and looked and looked and looked but have never leaped? Of course, we should consider alternatives carefully and use our reason and experience and the counsel of others as best we can. Finally, there comes a time to quit looking and start leaping. At last, there comes a moment to make a choice and live with it. The alternative is to drift our lives away in indecision and passivity. Opportunity knocks once, and sometimes twice or even maybe three times. It does not knock forever. So decide. Decide today.
The Psalmist contrasts the transitoriness of human life with the everlasting love of God. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount contrasts the anxious fretting about food, drink, and clothing with the possibility of living trustfully before God. The Psalmist points us to the love of God. Jesus points us to the Commonwealth of God. He urges us to believe that if we set our minds first on God's providential care, we can live a day at a time without worrying about tomorrow. With that kind of faith we can live each moment, each hour, each day to the fullest as we approach that final journey which we all must make.
Some years ago I was in Georgia visiting my parents. One afternoon we decided to ride over to the little church where I had been pastor. When we got there, I said, "Let's go by the cemetery. That's one way of catching up on some of the news." So we did. I walked from grave to grave. Here and there I saw the name of some person who had been an active member of the church 25 years ago. I paused a minute to remember each of them. Then one grave caught my eye in a special way. I read the words on the stone.
Marvin Brown
February 17, 1971
I remembered once again the words he had spoken not many yards from where I now stood looking at his grave. Marvin Brown had taken his journey.
While there is still time, let us begin to enjoy the ordinary pleasures of every day. While there is still time, let us make the decisions that life requires. We are all now many years closer to the journey that we all must take than we were when Marvin Brown was carried to his final resting place. So let us live to the fullest, beginning now -- while there is still time.
____________
1. An earlier version of this sermon was published in Pulpit Digest (May-June 1981), pp. 21-24. Reprinted with permission from Pulpit Digest, copyright Logos Productions Inc. (800-328-0200).
2. Thornton Wilder, Our Town (New York: Coward McCann, Inc., 1938), pp. 124-125.
