A Question of Life

The tree is half decorated, the advent wreath candle-less and bare. Not sure what the hold up is this year. Ordinary Christmas rituals are slow in coming maybe, replaced by regular AM and PM writing practice, it seems.

This morning I have little to say. I awoke with a moment of panic last night, out of nowhere it seems struck by the notion of death. I ran upstairs and kissed my children, those miracles of life who did not even exist six years ago. It seems they emerged from nowhere but their lives are created each and every day.

Gives a new wondering to the notion of when life begins--it seems that it is always beginnning and arising. There is no moment when God "inserts a soul" into lifeless matter, even a heartbeat or a breath being just one flicker of that full being. I have never been able to wrap my mind around the question of life-death matters such as abortion or euthanasia within the framework of this reasoning. Life is so much more a process, an interdependent evolution than it is a moment, turned on like a light-switch. To view the difficult questions outside of an interdependent context seems to deny the real nature of our existence.

It seems that in order to make sense of the most difficult choices in this world, it must all be viewed within the context of our broken world. Brokenness creates brokenness, and the question lies at which point we might begin to heal. And so, to point a finger at a woman who has been victimized again and again as if she were the sole perpetrator of violence is to ignore the complex systemic violence which has compressed and eliminated her life options. And again, there are circumstances where violence is necessary--where to save one life, a dependent arising one must be lost. To legislate and define so strictly as to eliminate choices is to perpetuate a violence toward women.

I'm not going to get into a political argument here. I am an advocate only for compassion--in our words, our thoughts, our actions. And I am an advocate for the continuous birthing process that takes place with the help of all of us to support and uphold all beings. To show compassion for one life, while ignoring the whole is not true compassion. For, as the Buddhists know, compassion is more than sympathy. It is an understanding of the interdependent connections of all beings and all moments of time.