What Child is This?

If the world is metaphor, as I have written, the primal metaphor is family. Our relationship with the father – provider of the vital essence that becomes our life – is our relationship with the Heavenly Father, the divine Intelligence that dreams our existence. Our relationship with the mother – who nurtures us in the womb, and provides for our needs in infancy – is our relationship with the Divine Mother, the infinite Compassion that sustains us throughout eternity. If we have a loving relationship with our earthly Father and Mother, it is because, in the past, we have developed that relationship with God. And if there is something lacking in our relationship with our parents, there is something lacking in our relationship with God.

Yet whether the relationship with our parents is good or bad, perfected, or a work in process, sooner or later, they die; and sooner or later, we are left alone. There is a profound finality in this, whether it comes when we are 7 or 70; and there is an indelible poignancy in it – whether acknowledged or not. For in the end, we are each one of us orphans. We are each one of us alone. Each one of us will leave this world as we came into it – in utter isolation, in the presence of God alone. And if we feel inadequate, if we feel bereft, it is because our relationship with God is not yet deep enough.

My own Mom passed away June 29th in Boston. It wasn’t a surprise; she was 93, and for the last few months, her health wasn’t good. But she soldiered on to the end, singing “Blue Skies” to my wife on the phone a day before she died, making it a point to tell me what a great son I was, and how beautiful her life had been – as I told her she’d been a great Mom. “I’m not going to say goodbye,” she said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

If life is a school, as they say, then death is the final exam. You can’t fake it, you can’t cheat, you can’t cram. Your whole life is a preparation for it. She passed the test, my Mom. What can I say? I miss her terribly.

Which is to say, I still have work to do. I am not close enough to God.