Life to Death

Father McKeon

November 30, 2005

Death frames life and infuses it with an aura of mystery.

We cannot reduce life to function or to the ordinary.

We cannot seize life nor confine it to experience.  It defies limitation.

Death beckons us in a way that does not limit us but offers more.  Death is the gateway that enhances the mystery beyond time and place.

Every spiritual tradition celebrates death as a form of liberation.  It is not seen as retribution or a penalty.

We reduce ourselves when we become the arbiters of life.

And we reduce ourselves when we become the arbiters of death.

Civilized people have an intuition that life is to be encouraged and celebrated.

To willfully kill another human being is to bring terror to the world.

It does not become us.

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