Happy Birthday: Thanks For Your Life

This "blogspot" begins with a few thoughts on “Birthday’s” by Henri Nouwen

Birthdays are so important. On our birthdays we celebrate being alive. On our birthdays people can say to us, “Thank you for being!” Birthday presents are signs of our families’ and friends’ joy that we are part of their lives. Little children often look forward to their birthdays for months. Their birthdays are their big days, when they are the centre of attention and all their friends come to celebrate.
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We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.

Last Saturday was one of those very busy days. I had lots of things to attend to. It didn’t start well. My car was frozen and wouldn’t start. I couldn’t do anything about it immediately as I had to open the Hilary Azzize for the Altrincham Court Leet. I was made a Freeman of Altrincham a few years ago, for services to the community, particularly in the area of mental health and addiction, and serve as chaplain to the Court Leet. I led devotions based on impermanence and the uncertainty of life. As part of the devotion we shared a time of silence to honour those who had died in recent times that were either members of the Court Leet or close friends and family members. I knew several of those named, two were close to my heart, one very much so. As I left I swallowed hard as I thought of those lost lives and the impact they had on my life and the lives of so many others. I then called breakdown recovery to get my car going. I had two birthday celebrations to get to, one in the afternoon and another in the evening. I called ahead to warn that I might be late for the first celebration. The recovery man arrived got in my car turned the ignition and it started first time. The car had thawed completely, it had been minus 4 when I got up that morning and I had foolishly not driven the car In days. It has not been a problem since. After much mirth and laughter I quickly got changed and went to the first birthday. A chapel Carolyn Jones was celebrating her 80th birthday and all the important people from her life were there to share in her celebration. Her son Richard gave a wonderful telling of the story of her life, her achievements and the things that mean the most to her. She has lived quite a life, including overcoming a severe form of cancer in recent years, and it was wonderful to share in her celebration. I left to get home to take Molly for a walk, I was feeling guilty as I wasn’t spending much time with her that day. I then went out to share a friends birthday meal. She is a recovery friend, and it was wonderful to celebrate her life, with two distinct groups of people. Her family and her long-term friends, along with a whole group of friends from recovery. It was a wonderful night, celebrating her life and of course her new life that she is embarking on. It has been wonderful watching this woman grow and thrive in recent times. Wonderful to share and enjoy her journey. I then went home to spend the rest of the night with Molly, who herself has recently had her first half birthday, she recently turned 6 months old. I certainly didn’t need to eat again. I had enjoyed two meals and three pieces of cake. Very nice cake indeed. The cake brought me right back to childhood and memories of baking with my grandma. It’s taste and texture were identical to the cakes and buns she baked. It was a lovely memory.

Birthdays are oh so important and they should be marked and celebrated. They are truly “Holy Days”; they are an opportunity to honour the sacredness of our lives; they are opportunities to recognise one another’s sacred uniqueness. As Henri Nouwen so delightfully said “We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.”

I regret not celebrating either of my birthday’s last year. I really wasn’t in the mood. It was wrong of me to do so and somewhat selfish actually. Please do not let me do so again.

Some people have two birthdays. I am not just talking about the Monarch here by the way. Folk in recovery also celebrate a second birthday. They celebrate their sobriety birthday as well as their belly button birthday, a kind of re-birthday if you like. Mine is the 10th October 2003. On these days they turn down a different path, they begin their life journey again. They turn from non-being to living. Forrest Church when talking about the beginning of his new life after finding sobriety wrote the following in the last few months of his life as he was succumbing to cancer:

"Taken literally (in Hebrew and Greek as well as Latin), "conversion" is not "re-birth" but "turning". Once converted, we re-direct our journey. The American short-story writer Raymond Carver turned his life around by a decision to stop drinking. From that point forward, he met life's trials with equanimity and grace. When dying of brain cancer at the age of forty-nine. Carver summed up the nine years of freedom he had enjoyed during what turned out to be the final decade of his life with the same word that lept to mind when I give daily thanks for a yearlong reprieve from my cancer: "gravy". When we see life as the precious gift that it is, when we celebrate our birthday as a truly holy day we see that everything is indeed “gravy”.

Here he is in his own words, the poem “Gravy”.

“Gravy” by Raymond Carver

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

They say we only get one crack at life; this is true to some degree. That said we can at times begin again. When all feels lost at times, sometime it’s just the beginning of the end of an old way of being that may lead us down another path. We can begin again in love.

This week I conducted the memorial service of one such woman. One who lived a life of love and service for the last 37 years of life, one remembered fondly by those she helped. She made great use of her life and many of her friends wanted to remember this. It is always fascinating what you learn about a person at their funeral and or memorial service. It was good to hear about Carolyn, from her son Richard, while she is still with us, something that was not guaranteed in recent times.

As I was reflecting on these lives, both lost and celebrated. I was reminded of a poem, very popular at funerals these days.

It's called the “Dash” by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
From the beginning...to the end

He noted that first came the date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
That they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
Know what that little line is worth

For it matters not, how much we own,
The cars...the house...the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

I know it’s a bit of a folksy poem, but its message is deep, powerful and meaning filled. The dash appears short and even thin and yet it can be deep and meaning filled.

Again this brought me back to another extract from Forrest Church’s masterpiece “Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow”, written while he was dying of oesophageal cancer. He asked "knowing that we will die, what should we do?" To which he answered "we should live, we should laugh, and we should love." He then recalled a lesson he learnt from his children, about living. One day, when they were young, he was walking them to school, on a busy New York street. Suddenly a car swerved round a corner and almost killed them all. Forrest was incensed by this, but he remembers, "my kids just laughed, romping blithely down the sidewalk, jumping from tree to tree as they always did, trying to touch the leaves." The kids were celebrating, nay singing the joy of living, and they "had the right idea. Why didn't I think to jump and touch the leaves?"

Forrest believed that it was living, loving and laughing that took real courage, they required heart, while dying didn’t really take much courage at all, in his eyes that just came naturally. Something he was experiencing as he wrote these words.

Now to really live Forrest suggested a simple little mantra:" Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are." He didn’t suggest that this would be easy but it is the only way to live and in so doing we will live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for by the love we leave behind. There was a lot of love celebrated in the lives of those living and those who have died in the last week.

I believe that Forrest uncovered a simple little answer as to how each of us should live, a way to bring deep meaning to the ordinariness of our lives. This is how we should live. To want the things that make up our lives and not wish for something else and in so doing we might just begin to be who we truly are, instead of wishing we were someone else. In so doing we can do the things that we are able to do and thus bring deep meaning to the little bit of the dash that we are living right now.

This is the gift of life, the beautiful gift of being alive in this ordinary moment, a moment that can become deep and meaningful, not only for ourselves but for those we get to share our lives with. For we never know how long we’ve got left how close we are to the end of the line, the last part of dash. Nor do we know how close those we love are to the end of theirs. At the memorial service I heard of another friend who has been given a very bad cancer diagnosis, he is facing it with courage as he has so many things over the years.

So how do we end this little dash of a service. Well I will offer a ittle bit of wisdom by Kurt Vonnegut, towards the end of his life.

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to famous authors and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond. Here is his response. It is magnificent:

“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

So, let’s go live our lives. It is the ultimate free gift, the ultimate grace, it’s gravy. Go live whatever time we have best, let’s do it in style.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"