from Sorrow Songs—the Ground of Hope
(part two)

The fact that death can be reduced to a manageable unit in any sense, whatsoever, reveals something that is profoundly significant concerning its character. The significant revelation is in the fact that death, as an event, is spatial, time encompassed, if not actually time bound, and therefore partakes of the character of the episodic. Death not only affects man by involving him concretely in its fulfillment, but man seems to be aware that he is being affected by death in the experience itself. There is, therefore, an element of detachment for the human spirit, even in so crucial an experience. Death is an experience in life and a man, under some circumstances, may be regarded as a spectator of, as well as participant in, the moment of his own death. The logic here is that man is both a space binder and a time binder.

The second attitude towards death that comes to our attention is one of resignation mixed with elements of fear and a manifestation of mutual dread—this, despite the fact that there seems to have been a careful note of familiarity with the experiences of death. It is more difficult for us to imagine what life was like under a less complex order of living than is our lot. We are all of us participants in the modern conspiracy to reduce immediate contact with death to zero except under the most extraordinary circumstances. We know that death is a common place in the experience of life and yet we keep it behind a curtain or locked in a closet, as it were. To us death is gruesome and aesthetically distasteful as a primary contact for ourselves and our children. For most of us, when members of our immediate families die, the death itself takes place in a hospital. Particularly is this true of urban dwellers. From the hospital, the deceased is carried to a place of preparation for burial, the mortuary. When we see the beloved one again, the body has been washed, embalmed, and dressed for burial. Our exposure to the facts involved, the silent intimacies in preparation for burial, are almost entirely secondary, to say the least. The hospital and the mortuary have entered profoundly into the life of modern man, at this point. The result is that death has been largely alienated from the normal compass of daily experience. Our sense of personal loss may be great but our primary relationship with death under normal circumstances tends to be impersonal and detached. We shrink from direct personal contact with death. It is very difficult for us to handle the emotional upsets growing out of our experience with death when we are denied the natural moments of exhaustive reaction which are derivatives of the performance of last personal services for the dead. Therapeutic effects are missed. Tremendous emotional blocks are set up without release, making for devious forms of inner chaos, which cause us to limp through the years with our griefs unassuaged.

This was not the situation with the creators of the spirituals. Their contact with the dead was immediate, inescapable, dramatic. The family or friends washed the body of the dead, the grave clothes were carefully and personally selected or especially made. The coffin itself was built by a familiar hand. It may have been a loving though crude device, or an expression of genuine, first-class craftsmanship. During all these processes, the body remained in the home—first wrapped in cooling sheets and then “laid out” for the time interval before burial. In the case of death from illness all of the final aspects of the experience was shared by those who had taken their turn “keeping watch.” Every detail was etched in the mind and emotions against their background of the approaching end. The “death rattle” in the throat, the spasm of tense vibration in the body as the struggle for air increased in intensity, the share physical panic sometimes manifest—all these were a familiar part of the commonplace pattern of daily experience. Out of a full, rich knowledge of fact such a song as this was born:

I want to die easy when I die,
I want to die easy when I die,
Shout salvation as I fly,
I want to die easy when I die.

A quiet death without the seizure of panic, the silent closing of the door of earthly life, this is the simple human aspiration here.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 204-205
Originally published in The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death)

I learned yesterday of the recent death of Rev. Dr. Dorsey O’Dell Blake, Thurman’s successor as the Presiding Minister of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. I can’t help but read these passages of Thurman’s about death without thinking of the particularity and peculiarity of each death, each person, and even my own eventual death. “I want to die easy when I die,” too, and share until the end my own sense of salvation in the Universe.

As I was looking through material related to Dr. Blake’s death, I came across the current statement of the Commitment each member of the Fellowship Church makes:

The Commitment

I affirm my need for a growing understanding of all peoples as children of God, and I seek after a vital experience of God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and other great religious spirits whose fellowship with God was the foundation of their fellowship with all people.

I desire to share in the spiritual growth and ethical awareness of people of varied national, cultural, racial, and creedal heritage united in a religious fellowship.

I desire the strength of corporate worship through membership in The Church for The Fellowship of All Peoples, with the imperative of personal dedication to the working out of God’s purposes here and in all places.

This statement connects one’s commitment to needs and desires, to understandings and experiences, and a notion that spiritual growth and ethical awareness is something that is shared. This reflects my own sense of what it takes to live a rich life, even the life of a mystic. This may even be way of life that allows one to consider their own death.

I learned today that Dr. Blake and I share one feature in common: we are each graduates of Brown. I will be spending time tomorrow not only with Thurman but with videos of some of Dr. Blake’s sermons. Much to ponder from a life well-lived.