Wherever You Go, There You Are

                  “Wherever you go, there you are” is a quote that has been around for many years.[i] It’s been nudging me recently.

                  This past week I decided to go through some old files.  They included a selection of my academic papers, published articles, old sermons, early courtship letters from our marriage, and family Christmas letters we’d sent to friends over the years.  I was surprised at some things – I didn’t remember taking that particular class or having that specific experience. It felt like I was watching my life go by and also sensing I’m the same person as when it all began.  It’s like being on a train, passing through unknown places and having unexpected experiences, but realizing it’s an unchanged “me” looking out the window the entire trip. Wherever I went, there I was.

                  What I see now in the mirror looks different than what I’ve seen the past but it’s the same me that’s looking.

                  What will eventually happen to this “me” that seems to be the ongoing observer of my life?

A good friend of mine has been a hospice volunteer for many years and at the bedside of many dying people.  Given the right care and support, he tells me people coming close to having their “me” leave their body feel no fear but experience a calm trust in the unknown. 

                  Some say “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” … period.  We are made of eleven basic elements, mostly carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.  How amazing that eleven elements could come together in just the right way to create a space for a “me” that looks out at this world, tries to make sense of it, lives for decades, then dissipates and disappears. 

                  Some say, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes, yet in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life.”  The me that was carried along by the material elements doesn’t disappear when those elements cease functioning but continues in some form, and it all comes as a gift.

                  I remember someone asking Huston Smith, the great scholar of world spiritual traditions, what happens when we die.  He said the spiritual traditions assume one of two possibilities.  The first possibility is that we keep our self-awareness and become witnesses of something awe-inspiring like an eternal sunrise.  The second possibility is our awareness simply dissolves into the sunrise.  Then he smiled and said, “I like to think I might have a choice. If so, I’d choose to first witness the divine sunrise. But after a while – maybe after a thousand years — I’d decide that was enough. Then I’d let go and become part of it all.”

                  Back to sorting files.  Happy New Year.

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[i] There are numerous possible sources of this quote, but it gained popularity in 1994 as the title to a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.