Not For Me

Elderhood, Moses, Bonhoeffer, and Community.



Many threads are coming together.

Last night I went to see Stephen Jenkinson in “Nights of Grief and Mystery.” My friend called it “A Distillation” in a kind of wonder at how much she had been moved without knowing why; or as Stephen himself said more than once: “How did this come to take place?”

I’m afraid to tamper with the wholeness of Stephen’s message, because of the way it sinks deep down behind the breastbone as it passes through on its way out of town, and leaves behind (somewhere below our diaphragm) an odd sort of certainty that sorrow and wisdom, loss and change, have never been at all what we thought they were.

Grief and Love ignore us as they exchange some kind of unspoken vow, and walk out together, leaving us no time to pack before we have to decide if we’re going to follow them.

Impermanence refuses to put on the mask of resentment that we beg it to wear; it just starts singing about kings and wars and usefulness, and we can’t help ourselves: we sing along.

Death touches noses with us, and in the smell of its breath we find that we have no rights, not a single one, and yet our tears don’t care; they offer themselves anyway.

Regrets become stones that we’ve dug out of the fields of our lives, and piled somewhere down the hill. Did we always know that they were there, rough and solid— haphazard, or lifted into a cairn that marks a trail we never took?

Moses didn’t always know that the promised land was not for him, but we have always known it, and mourned for him. In memory of Moses, the message becomes: “It’s not about me.” In honor of Moses, I’ll forgo packing for the journey, and set off on the trail of Love and Grief, without a clue where I’m going.



Bonhoeffer says “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community”…. and …. “Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.” He also said, “You are not alone, even in death….” Even more tellingly, he talked about how the other person’s freedom is our burden to bear. My margin notes go like this: “The solitary’s community is the whole world! All the people, as well as  earth, sky, water, and fire. This is not a conceit. When B. talked about “bearing” one another’s freedom— that’s when it clicked. Samsara; corporate confession which stems from my sense of participation in all the sins that are taking place or ever have taken place; my amazement at creation, and in particular my wonder at the mortal thing called a human being. My own community, the Lindisfarne Community, is the lens through which the community of the world comes into focus. It gives me the context, and “rule” by means of which I can apply everything B. says about community life to my relationship ‘with all beings.’ Yowzah!”



Community is a slippery concept, until it slides right out from under all my struggling, yanking thoughts and becomes a zone of habitation, a sphere of shared air in which we all have room to breathe. A realm in which we bear the burden of each other’s freedom, and in which I am able to remember that the fruit of my wisdom; the import of my grief; the weight of my regrets— they are not for me.

Like Moses— whether willing or not— they are bequests meant to be useful to other people. They are ways and means, messages and conveyances, crafted for the sake of their helpful purpose, and standing on their own merit.

They are principles that will never mean what I once thought they did, and that will be of no use at all until I forget whatever status I believed they held, and let them go on without me to be found or not found; used or not used; remembered or forgotten; on my account — or not.

Surely, the question of how they will be used (or even if they will be used at all) is an exercise of bearing the burden of my neighbor’s freedom.

To be free, all on my own, to pick up and bear that burden is both a grief and a delight.