Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion On Life Events

Dear Friends,

      During our lives we encounter many happenings that I refer to as “life events” those moments that leave us with a profound and often lasting memory. Your first day of school, did your mother walk you to school and say “goodbye” while fighting off tears. Maybe the time you fell off your bike or out of a tree followed by a trip to the hospital. Your first kiss from a girl you were dating, the day your life long companion since childhood, “Rags” died. Perhaps you served in the military or wore a badge making split second life and death decisions. How about the joys of getting married and going on your honeymoon, the birth of your children, buying a new car or your dream house? Maybe watching your children as they grow experiencing many of the same things you did and how it seems, to them, like something new that only they have ever experienced. Did you puff with pride as they played ball, sang in the choir, or took part in a school play? Did you and your spouse hold hands gleaming the day they graduated, cap and gown, as they accepted their diploma. Did you hide your tears like your Mom did your first day of school as they drove off to college? As you tucked these experiences into your memory vault did you also worry? Did you worry about the trees that were out there just waiting for a child to fall from them, or the things they may encounter as they leave home to spread their wings. What dangers will they face, did your parents have the same trepidations as you marched off to adulthood. Does life seem to hold more dangers today than in your youth?

      Life certainly does seem to change generation to generation, as the simple life becomes over populated and complex. Life seems to have become overwhelmed with self gratification, me – me – me. A car is no longer merely a means to move from place to place but now it is a status symbol. Our homes are places to keep our treasures; TV’s in every room, the latest electronic “do dads”, computers, cellular phones that contain more information than the public library of our day. With what affect on our lives have these changes come. Families no longer live generation to generation in a “family home” children don’t take over the “family business”, and schools now teach without parental involvement, Church going is no longer a guaranteed family together event. Too often the desires of the individual are all that matter, my “recreational activity”, how “I relax”, “I work hard, I deserve to indulge myself!” To what end are the pleasures and desires of the individual important enough to preclude all else. This was brought home with great impact for me as one of my “life’s events” through a conversation with a friend of mine, a Funeral Director, who was unable to meet for breakfast as he was preparing for a funeral. Now that did not seem strange until he extrapolated further; he, on an ongoing basis donated his services to perform funeral arrangements for children who die often before the age of one. For whatever reason the parents turn them over to the state for final arrangements that he explained as a scatter garden, these children’s ashes find their final resting place in a plot of cemetery ground complete with flowers and trees as their only marker. No words are spoken on their behalf their ashes are just silently spread. It was agreed that we would meet and together we would bless these forgotten children of God, so, early one brisk morning we stood beside their final resting place, this garden where these children who die knowing neither love nor name and we prayed “as it says in the Bible, “Suffer unto me the children of God.” I baptized them secure in knowing that with God they knew love and name.

       (Paul Big Bear is an Ordained Minister)