ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

Sometimes we start at the end.

One thing ends, another begins.  A season ends,  a season begins. One day ends,  a new day begins.  A job ends and a better job begins. An old relationship ends, a new relationship begins.  One life ends, other lives begin.  We mark time by endings and beginnings – birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, reunions, holidays, decades, deaths – all marked on a calendar with dates, times, and places, often captured in photographs and remembered with stories.

It was Sister Mary Corita Kent, the artist/nun who said, “Do you not see how every end is in itself a beginning?”  The quote has been attributed to numerous people from Buddha to Seneca to Marianne Williamson.  I heard Sr. Corita use it in a speech.  She was talking about innovation in design and education and because she and I were both opposed to the war in Viet Nam, we had a connection, a common interest and commitment.  There is a piece of hers in the Harvard art museum called “Stop the Bombing” and the text follows.

“Stop the bombing / I am terrified of bombs, of cold wet leaves and bamboo splinters in my feet, of a bullet cracking through the trees, across the world, killing me-there is a bullet in my brain, behind my eyes, so that all I see is pain I am in Vietnam who will console me? from the six o’clock news, from the headlines lurking on the street, between the angry love songs on the radio, from the frightened hawks and angry doves I meet a war I will not fight is killing me–I am in Vietnam-who will console me? I am in Vietnam-who will console me? “

Like other wars that dragged on, Viet Nam had a beginning and an end and we endured, by protesting until the end on April 30, 1975.  That war began the year that I graduated from high school and started college, in 1955.  It was some time around 1967 that I met Sr. Corita and we shared our common concerns and activities in the areas of social justice. 

I found good support for some of my work in the 60’s from various religious people including the Jesuit brothers, Dan and Phil Berrigan.  They and Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, were the founders of CALCAV (Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Viet Nam) and at the time, I was an active member as a clergyman.  That coincided with my meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 and he was also a vocal opponent to the war, as well as a member of the clergy and former pastor.

My religious affiliation with the Church had a beginning and an end. The official beginning was April 6, 1962, and the end with the organized Church, was 7 years later, in 1969. My spiritual journey continued without the benefits or burdens of an organized religious group.

Several years ago, my wife’s mother was “in transition” between life and death, a term that Hospice uses to describe the process of someone leaving this life in the final hours, or days, as they come to the end of life as we know it.  Her mother, at 107, said several times that she was ready to die and knowing that she would probably not walk again, or be able to be mobile, weakened her resolve to live without the qualities of her life that she loved so much. She made the final transition on October 21, 2021. 

An inveterate world traveler, author, matriarch, and a woman of independent mind and spirit, we celebrated her and her life on Ocober 25, 2021.  The beginning of her life was in Hereford, Texas, her pregnant mother arriving by train from San Antonio to Adrian and then by horse and wagon to Hereford to her grandparents’ house where she was born on January 26, 1913.  An ending with a beginning and a full life in between.  The next post will deal with life, death and living between those two bookends.  Stay tuned and in the meantime, find ways to celebrate your endings and beginnings.