HOLY GROUND, NOT STAND YOUR GROUND

A woman called her husband and told him to pick up some organic vegetables for that nite's dinner. The husband stops at the store, starts searching allover the place couldn't find. Asked the produce guy. The produce guy didn't know what he was asking about. So the husband said: “These vegetables are for my wife. Heave they been sprayed with poisonous chemicals?

And the produce guy replied: “No sir, you will have to do that yourself.”

Last Wednesday was earth day. There was lot of talk about eating organic vegetables, eco-friendly living, climate change, etc. Usually, you don't hear much about earth day in churches because, it is considered a “worldly” topic. Last year, after I preached a sermon on earth day. A nice lady chided me for talking about earth in church instead of the Bible. How an earthly topic could belong in a heavenly place, she thought.

Years ago, I would not have noticed this day, or paid any attention to it, let alone preach about it. So much has changed in my spiritual life that I consider earth day as important as other religious holy days.

I have reflected deeply about the unfathomable beauty, mystery and magnificence of this moving, yes moving blue dot in space which holds me up as God holds me tenderly in the palm of His/Her hand.

Today, I invite you to join me in reflecting about the earth from a spiritual point of view. I want you consider it from a divine perspective. You have heard the song “I am standing on holy ground” sung in churches. It is referring specifically to the church as holy ground. I invite you expand your mind to include every ground as holy, the whole earth as holy, because, it is created by God.

That is why the psalmist proclaims (24:1) “the earth is the Lord's and everything in it.” “Be exalted, O God above the heavens and let your glory be over all the earth (108:5).

Thomas Aquinas who understood the deeper meaning of that psalm said: “Divine revelation comes in two volumes; scripture and nature.”

Theologian Thomas Berry elaborates it: “The natural world is our primary scripture, our primary awakening to the mysteries of existence. We might well put all our written scriptures on the shelf for twenty years until we learn what we are being told by unmediated experience of the world about us.”

We usually focus our attention on the Bible and look for God in the book. But today, I like you to focus on the earth beneath your feet and around your eyes to experience God.

I have lived on this earth 23,468 days and it has never failed to provide for me: air, water and food, the three most basic ingredients needed for my very existence. Thank you holy mother earth. As I walk gently on this holy ground, I join with prophet Isaiah this morning to say: “The whole earth proclaims the glory of God.”

Let us take a closer look at our home planet. We usually experience it as stationary, because that is what our five senses tell us. But if we could stop for a moment and reflect, we will realize that we are moving, rather spinning, and yet staying put...that is a huge mystery worthy of adoration itself.
The earth spins around its axis at the speed of 1,000 miles an hour at the equator. It takes 24 hours to spin around once. The spinning makes our days and nights. But as we spin, we are also on another circle journey as we orbit round the sun. Traveling at the speed of 66,600 miles an hour, this second journey takes 365 days to complete. In that annual pilgrimage around the sun, we travel 595 million miles—with no oil change or tire rotation. Think about that...

This moving planet is huge. But compared to the sun, earth is very tiny...the sun is 1.3 million times bigger than the earth, but compared to Antares, the 15th brightest star in the sky, which is a 1000 light years away, the sun is a pixel. It is a mind boggling mystery.

Back to earth; It weighs a gazillion tons, a normal calculator doesn't have digits for that. The surface is 300 million square miles; there are 7.7. million species of animals living on it. We are familiar with a cat or a dog or a cow or an elephant, a donkey or a horse but there are millions of others. There are 2700 different species of snakes. Have you ever stood front of an aquarium and watched those beautiful fish with different colors and textures? We might see a dozen varieties; but there are 2400 different ones. There are a 1000 species of birds.

And the amazing thing is that this huge earth with everything in it is not attached to anything...nothing below, nothing above, nothing in front or back, except deep dark endless space...and yet we don't fall down or spin out of control.....we don't deviate from the path...because, if we deviate from the orbit by one inch closer to the sun, we will be incinerated; one inch away, we will be frozen to death; to me that is one of the greatest mystery and miracle that God has created.

Just go to the beach, look at the vast ocean and endless sky and contemplate the universe and ..if your eyes bulge with tears, and your heart pound with wonder and your mind feels a deep awe, you are having a spiritual experience. You are connecting with God, the creator of the universe. Such an awareness of distance, speed and order creates a sense of awe and wonder.

Astronauts and cosmonauts who have had the privilege of seeing the earth from space were always moved by its beauty and majesty. This is what astronaut Edgar Mitchell said as he gazed down on the home planet:

On the return trip home, gazing 240,000 miles of space towards the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving and harmonious. My view of the planet was a glimpse of divinity.

Perhaps what we need is a trip to outer space, to have our eyes and hearts opened to see the sacredness behind the superficial.

But, wait a minute. We are traveling in space; we don't have to lift our bodies from the earth to see the beauty and the splendor of God's creation; we only need to lift our minds...and open our eyes. But, that is the problem...our minds are small and our eyes are closed..

It is worthy of note that Mitchell uses the word 'divinity' but not 'God'. God is a divisive term for many. Religions people fight over their own definitions of God and make declarations like, “My God is bigger than your God.” “My God can beat up our God.” “The Christian god is a man, the Hindu god is a cow and the Muslim God is a terrrorist,”


When we use 'divinity' instead of “God' what is at work here is 'spirituality' not 'religion.' And our goal is to evolve more each day as spiritual beings not merely as religious people.

When we see the earth as a whole, from outer space, we can clearly see the connectedness and interdependence of all of us who live upon this planet. We have created imaginary boundaries, dividing ourselves into countries and states. We forget that in reality we are all living together, breathing the same air, drinking from the same water, eating food grown from the same earth.

We share everything on this planet with other people, whether we are conscious of it or not. For example, the air that is in your lungs today was circulated yesterday through the lungs of somebody living in China. The air in the lungs of the person next to you, enters your lungs in a few minutes. It is like two people eating from the same plate.

Imagine you walk into a restaurant and notice two people sharing a plate of food. It shows a level of intimacy, closeness and love.

Few months ago, I had lunch with one of my former supervisors who is also a friend. She ordered dessert and I didn't. A generous portion of ice cream souffle was placed in front of her. “I can't finish it alone Paul, have some” she said. There were two spoons on the plate. The waiter must have thought we were a couple. Initially, I was reluctant to share ice cream with a woman who was not my wife. But ice cream? Forget the wife for a second. (just kidding).

While eating the ice cream from the same plate with a person who was not my blood family, I felt a special connection and affection for that person. She was from Jamaica, I was from India, we come from totally different worlds, experiences and backgrounds. But when we sat in that Benigans in Fort Lauderdale, and shared ice cream from the same plate, it felt like a divine connection.

Try that some day with somebody who is not a family member. It is an amazing experience of closeness, intimacy, love, freedom and unity. (and don't let your partner find out...just kidding).

If you really think about it, sharing food with others, from the same plate is happening every day everywhere. You are doing it right now. You are not sharing ice cream; in fact you are sharing something more important; you are sharing the air—food for your brain. Living on the earth and sharing the same air with everybody else is, in fact like sharing food from the same plate—an abundant cosmic plate.

Everyday, 7 billion people eat from that cosmic plate prepared and provided by mother earth—and the food never runs out.

Jesus had a special appreciation for the earth. He didn't live in high rise condos or work in board rooms. He taught on the mountain top, and the sea side; he prayed in the garden, and died on a hill. He talked about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, because Jesus knew that the earth proclaims the glory of God.


Don't just live on the earth as aliens and strangers, plundering and taking advantage of its resources, but be respectful and grateful for everything that the earth offers, which is our life itself. We should erase from our minds the mistaken idea that we are living “on” the earth and replace it with the notion that we are living “with” the earth, because we are part of it. We came out of the earth and we will return to it. We should always remember that the earth can survive without us, but we cannot survive without the earth. That should be a humbling thought.

So celebrating earth day is about seeing the big picture; it is about feeling the connection with the earth, with everything and everyone on it; it is about thinking about the welfare of all people beyond the boundaries our nation; it is about relinquishing narrow nationalism and embracing a wider humanity; Earth day is about looking at all the people on this earth as members of the one body of Christ.

It is about transcending our tribal mentality and having a planetary consciousness.

It is about feeling the love of Jesus in our heart and walking on holy ground as opposed to holding a gun in our hand and “stand our ground.” We know what that did to Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.

If George Zimmerman had considered his neighborhood “holy ground” a great tragedy could have been averted. Instead, he saw the little swath of real estate he occupied, as his ground that needs to be protected by him from “others.”

Earth day should remind us that there is no ground that needs protecting or barricading and that we are on the ground only for a short period of time.

“Divine revelation comes in two volumes: Scripture and Nature.” I encourage you to focus on the second volume!

As you leave the holy ground of this church, I pray that you consider every ground as holy and every person you meet as a manifestation of the Holy One.

WHY GOOD NEWS PEOPLE LIVE BAD NEWS LIVES

Once a pastor told his congregation: “I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that there is enough money in this congregation to give me a raise; the bad news is that money is in your wallets.”

Today's sermon- why good news people live bad news lives- is actually the title of one of my books. I am not preaching about it to sell books. Even if everyone here buys ten copies each, it is still not going to make me rich.

The reason I chose to preach about it is that, this question has always nagged me. Why do so many Christians, who claim to have received the good news of Jesus, behave so badly?

This question did not bother me much when I lived in India, because India is predominantly a Hindu nation. Christians are only a mere 2 percent. There are no mega churches; there are no TV evangelists. Vast areas of the country has no churches. There are no bibles in hotels. There are no hotels except in big cities.

It is very different here. Nearly 90 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. There are churches every where. There are 18 churches in a 5 mile radius of my house. Christians believe that they are the people of the Good News. Some people are even proud that they have it, with a slight touch of holy arrogance, I might add.

The other day a very religious person told me that those who don't believe in Jesus as their personal savior are going to hell for eternity. He had no doubt about that, because he had the good news and people belonging to other religions did not.

How do we live bad news lives? If you are living your life—angry, upset, impatient, short tempered, sad and depressed, and not so pleasant to be around, you are living a bad news life. People who have received the good news of Jesus should not feel or behave like that on a daily basis. Imagine you have won ten million dollars in a lottery. You think you will be sad, upset, gloomy and depressed? Good news is supposed to make us excited.

If you get up every morning with no energy and enthusiasm, and look at the world with negative lens, you are living a bad news life. If you are anxious and stressed out about everything, and experience a lot of anxiety and fear, you are living a bad news life. If your life is devoid of abiding joy, you are living a bad news life. The good news of Jesus has not penetrated your life.

When we are bad news to ourselves it is so hard to be good news to others. Hitler was bad news to 6 million Jews. George Zimmerman was bad news to Travon Martin, and by extension, to a whole lot of people. Each of us is capable of being bad news on a smaller scale, to the people around us, the people we live with work with and interact with.

About 3 billion occupants of this planet are supposedly “good news people” and of course that includes us. America is often described as a Christian nation. So, why is our country and the world largely a bad news place? Why there is such abject poverty, war, hatred, killings, divisions, disunity, homophobia, and partisanship? Why is such income inequality in this country? Why would those who claim to be followers of the “Prince of Peace” amass guns and assault weapons whose only purpose is to hurt and kill? What are they afraid of if they claim to understand the message of the risen Jesus who said: “Be not afraid?

My theory is that many Christians don't even know what the good news is, let alone understand what it really means!

What is the good news of Jesus? Think for a moment. If someone were to ask you to explain it, what would you say?

I posed that question on my Face Book page. I have 291 friends on Face Book. Only 9 of them offered an answer.

The gist of the answers was that “Jesus died for our sins; and after we die, we go to heaven and spend eternity with him.”

In a bible study group, a lady said: “Jesus died for our sins thereby giving us eternal life in heaven after we die; our salvation is guaranteed in Jesus.”

I shared these answers with my wife Judy. Her response was: “How is somebody's “death” “good news.”? It sounds like “bad news.” Besides, Jesus died 2000 years ago; what did I do? How can his death “then,” benefit my life “now”?

If Judy who is a baby-boomer thinks like that, can you imagine what the millennials are thinking? I don't think they are thinking much about anything, let alone serious theology. They are just repeating the phrase: “Jesus died for our sins” without understanding it. If you don't understand what you are repeating, it is unlikely to change your life.

Do you really know what that phrase means? Can you explain it in your own words? Try it, you will be surprised.

Let me clarify something; Jesus did not die on the cross; he was killed on the cross. What is the difference, you might ask. There is a big difference. It is not like Jesus woke up the morning of that Friday, and decided that he was going to die on the cross and asked the soldiers to pin him down and pierce his hands, legs and heart so that he could just die, something like an assisted suicide! He was just 33 years old. Who wants to die at 33? Who wants to die at any age?

If Jesus were to die of cancer at age of 90 under hospice care, we will not be sitting here. There would not have been any Christianity. It is the power of his resurrection that fueled the Christian movement. Resurrection means that the powers of evil cannot overcome the power and grace of God.

Jesus was brutally murdered by the authorities because his message and ideas were a threat to their very survival. The Pharisees did not want to give up their idea of religion. The Romans did not want to give up their grip on power. Jesus was a threat to both. They wanted to get rid of the troublemaker, so they conspired, fabricated a case and executed him.

In that sense, Jesus didn’t die so much “for” the sins of the world as he died “because” of the sins of the world. In other words, Jesus was killed “because of our sins,” rather than “for our sins.”


It makes us responsible for his death rather than beneficiaries of his death.

See how re-framing our thinking about Jesus' death, changes our image of Jesus.

This understanding will hopefully help us not to kill Jesus today through our hate, prejudice and insensitivity towards other people who are Jesus in disguise, because, “whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.”

So, back to the topic of good news. What is the good news of Jesus? I think the good news of Jesus is his “life,” not his “death.” Preachers and teachers have focused so much on the “death” of Jesus that they forget the “life” of Jesus, the message he preached, the kind of life he lived, the boundary-breaking love he showed, the forgiveness he practiced, the mercy he manifested for the lowly and the downtrodden.

If you read the gospels carefully, you will find that Jesus never called us sinners. Jesus never said that he came to die for our sins. Jesus never said he came to take us into heaven.

In the first 3 three gospels, Jesus appears on the scene when he was about 30 years old. He is baptized in the river Jordan; he is tempted for three days in the desert and after that he officially begins his public ministry.

What are the first words that Jesus spoke? According to Mt: 4:17, they are, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. According to Mk: 1:14, Jesus says: The Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe the good news.

The fact that the kingdom of God is “near” is the good news. Mathew and Mark do not explain what the kingdom is in that statement. In Luke we get an explanation. Jesus does not use the word kingdom in his inaugural speech as recorded in Luke 4. Like in Mark and Mathew, Jesus begins to preach after the baptism and temptation. He goes to a synagogue and reads from the book of Isaiah.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.

So what is this good news? The next lines unpack it: The good news is that Jesus has come to “proclaim freedom for the prisoners;” to bring “recovery of sight for the blind;” “to release the oppressed,” “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” If you follow Jesus you can experience all the above.

So the good news is that if you are a prisoner to your addictions and narrow mindedness and prejudices and hatreds, your one track mind, your arrogant nationalism, your thinking that everybody who disagrees with you should be destroyed, everybody who does not believe in him will go to hell, Jesus has come to help you change that.

The good news is that if you are blind to the beauty of God's creation around you, if you are blind to the goodness of people in the world, if you are blind to the blessings you already have, if you are blind to the poverty and injustice around you, if you are blind to the needs of others, then Jesus has come to heal your blindness and open your eyes.

The good news is that the Kingdom is near. This is not a far away land, a location beyond the clouds, a gated community for selected people, but a reality right here in the midst of our world. A Kingdom of love, peace, joy, patience, goodness, kindness and a sense of well being. That is why Jesus taught us to pray: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

The good news is that Jesus has come to proclaim the “year of the Lord’s favor” when debts are forgiven, mercy is shown to strangers, compassion is manifested, and peace and harmony prevail among the people. You can read about what the year of the Lord entails in Leviticus chapter 25. It is called the Jubilee year.

The good news is not a headline in a news paper. The good news is not words in a holy book.
The good news is the person of Jesus himself. Remember when he was born, the angel announced to the shepherds: I bring you good news of great joy to the people. (Lk 2:10)

So to experience the good news, we have to get to know the “historical Jesus” and follow him.

Most Christians don't know the historical Jesus; they only know the “Christ of faith.”

They know him as the Son of God, begotten by the father, born of a virgin, and the second person of the Holy Trinity. It is an “impressive resume.” But, focusing on the divinity of Jesus has very little impact on our humanity.

We will worship him in church and leave, but how can we follow the “second person of the Holy Trinity”?

We have to discover the “human Jesus” in the pages of the gospels who has the power to transform our lives as he did the lives of Nicodemus, Zacheus, Jairus, Nathaniel, Mathew and a lot of others. Everyone who encountered Jesus was transformed. We need to encounter Jesus and follow him rather than put him on a pedestal and worship him.

We cannot be like Jesus unless we find out what Jesus was like. We have to change our whole mind-set about what it means to be a Christian. That is why the first word out of the mouth of Jesus was: “Repent.” But repent does not mean, feel sorry for your sins. It has nothing to do with feeling bad or sorry for anything.

The Greek word for repent is metanoeo which means, a different mind. You have to have a different mind about things. You have to change your thinking and align that with the mind of Jesus: a new way of thinking and seeing the world. As apostle Paul would say: “You have to put on the mind of Christ.”

You have to think like Jesus, feel like Jesus and behave like Jesus. When you do that, you will start feeling the good news and that will lead you to being good news for others.

ANGRY SAD

Eric Gardner--a black man in New York was literally chocked to death by police for selling cigarets on the street. Nearly half a dozen officers gathered to kill this one man when there are many white collar criminals occupying various floors of the surrounding buildings, who are left alone so that they can devise the next scheme to defraud the public. None of the bankers who brought down the economy in 2008 and defrauded the public at large were neither charged with any crime let alone chocked to death. We pride ourselves saying that we have the best criminal justice system in the world. We don't; we just have a criminal system, not a "justice" system. The sham of grand jury system should be abolished first. Breathing is a birthright. To deprive someone of air by using a chokehold is a crime in itself, period. The fact that it was out-lawed by the the NY police department since 2008 should have been reason enough to indict this police officer. I grieve for Eric Gardner my brother. I grieve for his mother who had the painful misfortune of watching her son suffocate and die on a side walk. I grieve for Mr. Gardner's children who had to see their father struggling to breathe and ultimately die a helpless death. I pray for peace for all. I also pray that this negative experience bring forth something positive in the world.

DEATH WITH DIGNITY

The case of Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old newly-wed who was diagnosed with brain tumor— glioblastoma multiforme—is an inspiring and controversial story. She moved from California to Oregon where death with dignity laws exist18 to die with dignity rather than prolong her agony while experiencing the ravages of her disease. In a video message to her friends, she said: “When my suffering becomes too great, I can say to all those I love, I love you; come be by my side, and come say goodbye as I pass into whatever's next. I will die upstairs in my bedroom with my husband, mother, stepfather and best friend by my side and pass peacefully. I can't imagine trying to rob anyone else of that choice.”19 Pope Francis denounced the right to die movement, saying that euthanasia is a sin against God the creator of life. He said it was a “false sense of compassion” to consider euthanasia as an act of dignity. A Vatican’s top bioethics official condemned Brittany Maynard’s euthanasia as “reprehensible.”20 I think that was a cruel assessment and a heartless comment from a man who lives in an ivory tower miles away from the agonizing situation of this young woman and her family. Brittany’s mother, Debbie Ziegler was so upset about that remark that she wrote an open letter to all those who condemn her daughter’s agonizing decision: I am Brittany Maynard’s mother. I am writing in response to a variety of comments made in the press and online by individuals and institutions that have tried to impose their personal belief system on what Brittany and our family feel is a human rights issue. The imposition of “belief” on a human rights issue is wrong. To censure a personal choice as reprehensible because it does not comply with someone else’s belief is immoral. My twenty-nine-year-old daughter’s choice to die gently rather than suffer physical and mental degradation and intense pain does not deserve to be labeled as reprehensible by strangers a continent away who do not know her or the particulars of her situation. Reprehensible is a harsh word. It means: “very bad; deserving very strong criticism.” Reprehensible is a word I’ve used as a teacher to describe the actions of Hitler, other political tyrants and the exploitation of children by pedophiles. As Brittany Maynard’s mother, I find it difficult to believe that anyone who knew her would ever select this word to describe her actions. Brittany was a giver. She was a volunteer. She was a teacher. She was an advocate. She worked at making the world a better place to live. This word was used publicly at a time when my family was tender and freshly wounded: Grieving. Such strong public criticism from people we do not know, have never met--is more than a slap in the face. It is like kicking us as we struggle to draw a breath. People and institutions that feel they have the right to judge Brittany’s choices may wound me and cause me unspeakable pain but they do not deter me from supporting my daughter’s choice. There is currently a great deal of confusion and arrogance standing in the way of Americans going gently into the good night. I urge Americans to think for themselves. Make your wishes clear while you are competent. Make sure that you have all the options spelled out for you if you are diagnosed with an incurable, debilitating, painful disease. Do your own research. Ask your family to research and face the harsh reality with you. Ask your doctor to be brutally honest with you. Then make your personal choice about how you will proceed. It is YOUR choice. The “culture of cure” has led to a fairy tale belief that doctors can always fix our problems. We have lost sight of reality. All life ends. Death is not necessarily the enemy in all cases. Sometimes a gentle passing is a gift. Misguided doctors caught up in an aspirational belief that they must extend life, whatever the cost, cause individuals and families unnecessary suffering. Brittany stood up to bullies. She never thought anyone else had the right to tell her how long she should suffer. The right to die for the terminally ill is a human rights issue. Plain and simple.21 The Vatican bioethics official added that “suicide is a bad thing because it is saying no to life and to everything it means with respect to our mission in the world and towards those around us,” describing assisted suicide as “an absurdity.” Let us clarify a few things: First of all, Brittany didn’t commit suicide. Suicide is a desperate act, committed usually by mentally ill people who see life as hopeless and pointless. Brittany Maynard was anything but. “There is not a single cell in my body that is suicidal” she said. This woman wanted to live so badly. She was just 29 and newly married. She wanted children with her husband. Death was far from her mind. But when confronted with the inevitable and savage suffering that would surely ravage her body and mind, she chose to die with dignity, which I believe is a courageous act. The pope and the Vatican official speak from the false notion that suffering is good in itself and they point to the suffering of Jesus on the cross as a point of reference for all sufferings. Jesus did not suffer on the cross for the sake of suffering. Suffering was inflicted upon him by the religious authorities of his day. Jesus turned that suffering into a redemptive act. So, suffering undertaken for a higher cause and as a result of a higher calling is both redemptive and sublime. But to suffer, just for the sake of it, is merely masochistic. Another argument against euthanasia is that God is the creator of life. That is only true partially; the truth is that we and God are co-creators of life. Without human intention and participation no new life will be born, regardless of how hard God tries. This is not an arrogant stance of an unbelieving atheist but the humble opinion of a committed disciple who takes his identity as image of God seriously, and his calling as God’s ambassador responsibly.

CALL FORTH YOUR LIFE... Bishop Carlton Pearson describes life as a sexually transmitted disease. By calling life a disease, he is making it sound like a sickness, although his intention is to highlight the difficulties or lack of ease in our daily lives. I would reframe life as a sexually transforming miracle—the joining of a sperm and egg—to create a zygote, embryo, fetus, and ultimately a beautiful baby and eventually a full-fledged human being ready to transform the world. Why would the Universe, the Force, the Energy, the Consciousness (God) that initiated the miraculous process of creating the single-cell-zygote and transforming it into a 75-trillion-cell human person, forget about or discard Its (His) pet project when we grow up? So, our original calling card is trending towards a marvelous and miraculous life, not a miserable and mediocre existence. Our calling therefore is to consciously call it forth.

Imagine you are dining in a restaurant. Across from your table, you see a couple,obviously in love, sharing ice-cream from the same bowl. You will consider that beautiful. Those who love and care about each other have the freedom to share food from the same plate. If I were to tell you that all of us are eating daily from the same cosmic plate,sharing the same "food" you may be shocked, but that is the truth. The air being the food for our brains is being shared by all humans all the time. When you are in a room with a group of people, the air that is in the lungs of one person, is entering your lungs, when that person breathes it out. The air that is in the lungs of a person in China, reaches the lungs of a person living in the United States in about 24 hours. Thus the air which is our common food keeps us connected and related to each other. It is an invisible connection, but when can "see" that connection, the illusion of separation between humans dissolve and it becomes easy to love everyone.

iLive: The Relationship Continues...

It is an honor to be with you this afternoon. In the last ten years I have been with Vitas, I have never missed this biannual event. It is very special to me because, despite the sadness in this room, love is experienced, comfort is shared and support is felt here. This event is a soul soothing oasis in our lonely journey thru the desert of grief. In this room, I also feel the presence of our loved ones, because they are here with us to help us get thru the pain of their physical departure from us. So today, in his room, we are celebrating the lives of nearly 2400 souls who lost their physical form during the last six months. Yes, we have about 400 deaths a month in the Broward program. I like to specially remember two souls, Morris and Sy, who died 30 days apart on my team. The highlight of Morris's life was having lunch with me once a month, in the small Cafe in the ALF. He was 103 years old; never had children or extended family. I was his family. Watching him lift the soup spoon with his shaky hand ravaged by mild Parkinson's, depositing half the soup in his mouth and spilling half on his shirt, I was inspired by the dignity of this man who was fiercely independent till the very end. The last time we had lunch, he was so weak and confused, that he used the ten dollar bill he took out to pay the waitress, to wipe his runny nose. It was our last lunch. Morris died a week later. Sy who died a month before, was the most cheerful and positive person I have known. He always saw the glass half full; he always made lemonade out of lemons. When his sight faded and could not watch his favorite Marlins game on TV, he said: “60 years ago, in NY I used to listen to the games on radio. At the age of 94, Sy bought a computer and he used to forward jokes to me all the time. Most of them were dirty jokes, but there was this one which he thought I would really enjoy. I will share it with you in his honor. For centuries, Hindu women have worn a dot on their foreheads. Most of us have naively thought this was connected with tradition or religion, but the Indian embassy in Ottawa has recently revealed the true story. When a Hindu woman gets married, she brings a dowry into the union. On her wedding night, the husband scratches off the dot to see whether he has won a convenience store, a gas station, a doughnut shop, a taxi cab, or a motel in the United States . If nothing is there, he must remain in India to answer telephones and provide us with technical support. My ber support group always ended with a joke and some used to wonder if it was proper to laugh when talking about serious topics like loss and grief. I used to tell them that it is OK because, crying and laughter are emotional cousins, because tears show up both when we cry and laugh out loud. The third soul I want to remember today is Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. I just finished reading his biography. The title for my reflection today- iLive - was inspired by Steve Jobs, like his ipod, Iphone, and Ipad. The message that each of our loved ones is whispering in our ears today is this: iLive. iLive. I am not saying this just because I believe in the promises of Jesus. “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will never die.” Yes, I believe that, but beyond that, I have other reasons to believe that our loved ones live with us and around us all the time. Because I don't think that heaven is a far away location with a zip code that we can locate on a Google map, but a dimension around us. My father died 8 years ago. Since then, I have often wondered as to where he could be? I am sure, you must have asked that question about your loved ones? Once my wife heard me asking that question and she said: “He is six feet under ground in a cemetery in India.” And I said, I know his body is in the grave but what about his soul? ”His soul is in heaven, I guess,” she said. That was the end of our conversation, but that was not the end of my curiosity. I am not satisfied with traditional answers from holy books and pious preachers. As a Catholic, I used to believed in heaven, purgatory and hell as post-death destinations for the good, the bad and the ugly. But during the ten years as a hospice chaplain, witnessing so many deaths, my thinking and belief have changed. I am a strong advocate of “faith seeking understanding.” So, I like to propose a new understanding of death. When someone dies, we usually say: “the soul left the body,” which implies that the soul came from “somewhere,” inhabited the body for a few years and at the time of death, “left” to go back somewhere. It also implies that the body existed first and the soul came later, to inhabit the body. I think we should reverse that statement and say that at the time of death, “the body left the soul,” because the soul is eternal and ageless; It has no beginning or ending because the soul is part of God who is eternal. The soul that we carry within each one of our bodies, is a “spark” of God. That is what the Bible means when it says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. French theologian, Teilhard de Chardin beautifully expressed that truth in this powerful statement: “We are spiritual beings having a human experience not human beings having a spiritual experience.” So our body is just an impermanent and perishable wrapping for the soul; the seven billion people on this planet are wrapped in different colors, shapes and sizes, but inside, each one has a piece of God, a spark of divinity or the soul. Some have better wrappings than others. Some decorate and maintain their wrappings better than others, but at the end of the day, they are all wrappings. Death removes the wrappings, and the soul continues to live. To illustrate this point, Deepak Chopra uses the analogy of a house and the space it occupies. The space existed before the house was built there. The house is the body and the space is the soul. If the building is destroyed in a fire, the space it occupied is still there, and one can build another house there. (This is also a viable argument for reincarnation, but we won't get into that here). Now, let us return to the life of the soul after the body has died. Imagine you are watching your favorite television program. Fifteen minutes into the program, you shut the TV off and close your eyes. What happens to the program? It is still “in the air” as electromagnetic waves. Just because the television is “off'” the program does not cease to exist; just because the radio is “off” the music does not stop; just because the body has “died” the soul does not cease to live. I believe that everything in life has opposites but life itself has no opposite. Let me explain. There is “black and white,” “up and down,” “hills and valleys,” “night and day.” In fact night “ends” the day and vice versa. So, what is the opposite of life? The usual answer is, death. As a matter of fact, we have “life and death” paired together in common parlance and most of literature. But “death” is not the opposite of “life.” The word that should be paired with “death” is actually “birth.” It should be “birth and death” not “life and death.” Life is the only thing in life that has no opposite thereby making “life” unending or eternal. Look at the letters of the word LIFE which is L-ife I-s F-or E-ver! Steve Jobs was not really a religious person and he had his doubts. Few months before his death, during a conversation with his biographer Walter Issacson, he expressed hope about an after life. “Death could be like an on-off switch, click and you are gone” he said first. Then he paused and said, “may be it is not "And that's why I don't put on-off switches on Apple devices." It was reported that the last words of Steve Jobs before his death, were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” Is it possible that at the moment of his transition, this tech genius was “seeing” something magnificent and beautiful? Much more magnificent and marvelous than the Ipad itself? Which is kind of impossible! I think an individual soul rejoining with the eternal soul of God is a million times more magnificent and glorious an experience with no earthly comparison. May be that is what Steve Jobs experienced. A wise man once said that death ends a physical existence, not a relationship. I encourage you to forge a new relationship with your loved ones who are with you and around you, before you and behind you all the time, like God is with you all the time, because, at the moment of death, they just melted back in to the heart of God... to start their new life as angels. So, today, I like to leave you with this message from the book of Exodus: “I am sending you an angel in front of you, to guard you as you go, and to guide you, to the place I have prepared” (23:20) When our circle of life is complete, our loved ones will be there to meet us! (speech delivered by Dr. Paul Veliyathil at the bi-annual memorial celebration for VITAS patients on May 11, 2012)