Newsletter 9.9.24
The gift of time, embracing limits, and a few updates.
Greetings, Friends.
If you decide to stick around for the reflection below, thank you. These are thoughts I often wonder, and I prefer not to wonder alone. Thoughts and comments are welcomed. But first, some updates. This summer has been a joyous time for us to slow down and continue building relationships of trust.
After my internship with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center ended this summer, I had the opportunity to share about Jeremiah Commons and natural burial with some wonderful people during the bi-weekly community lunch at the Green Garage. If you’re ever in Midtown Detroit, please stop by the sustainable coworking space and say “hello” to the fine folks there.
Our board is growing. We will be adding a handful of sharp and compassionate folks to our board at the start of the year. Stay tuned.
We’ve continued connecting and partnering with deathcare professionals and kindred groups. If you think of anyone that would be good to connect with, please reach out!
We are scheduled to receive a determination of our tax-exempt status in the next two months.
As always, you can share our vision or website with a friend, connect with us via email, or donate to our community engagement fund.
Time rolls on and I’m just stepping into my third week of classes as my second year of law school begins. Perhaps you or your loved ones are returning to school—to aid in the learning process or to participate in it. Stepping back into these familiar rhythms and embracing the changing seasons reminds us of the gift of time. Often, my busy life forces me to view time as a burden. Something that I am obliged to attend to and wish that I had more of. But to acknowledge time as a gift is to embrace our limits—to embrace that all things have ends. Time allows us to grow, learn, and mature. We could not grow to love something or someone unless we are able to practice the long hours of intimacy and meaningful moments with which time gifts to us. Yet as embodied beings bound by time and limits, our lives inevitably entail suffering. We live in a world where there is only so much: Only so much time in a day; Only so much strength in the back; Only so much a field can produce; Only so much our minds and bodies can take.
About 1600 years ago, Augustine of Hippo reflected on the death of a dear friend: “What madness not to understand how to love human beings with awareness of the human condition!” (Confessions, Bk IV, vii) In his lament, he realized that he began loving his friend without truly coming to terms with the fact that his friend was mortal—that loving this other embodied being would also entail suffering. Of course, recognizing that a loved one is mortal does not prevent the pain and anguish of loss. An inherent partner of time, death is a limit to life. Death is mysterious and often agonizing. There are deaths that come before their time—loved ones lost to the death-dealing forces of this world. There are also individuals facing that limit, like Shari’s grandmother who, when told in her late 80s that she had another 10 years, quipped that she wasn’t sure if she wanted that much more time. Death, whether at a welcome time or, as is most often the case, not, forces us to come to terms with the limit of our mortality. Death can also help us recognize how bound up our lives are with the lives, and deaths, of other living creatures.
About a year ago, the day before we had planned our first community meeting for Jeremiah Commons, our oldest daughter, who was three then, began asking a series of questions: “What are cars made of? What are trees made of?” She continued workshopping her upcoming History Channel series as I buckled her into the car seat. After I’d clicked the last latch, she looked up and asked, “What are humans made of?” Her question forced my lips slightly upward because it struck at the heart of our natural burial–land project. We are made up of the life around us. Through the passage of time, sunlight, soil, and rain are turned into bundles of living energy which are consumed by humans and animals alike. We are embodied creatures reliant on the lives of the breathing world around us. A dear professor of mine often encouraged his students to consider our belly buttons as the first and constant reminder of our reliance on the life of another. Our own bodies are hosts to trillions of microorganisms all reliant on our own life. The gift of time helps us remember that we rely on the constant transformation of life into other life.
I view natural burial as a way to take, head-on, the question “What are humans made of?” It is a practice that, even (or especially) amid loss, urges us to consider our relationship with all those near and dear to us. Those that are human, and all that are not. The beautiful and ancient practice removes the barriers that would seek to prevent what we are made of from returning to the land. Put simply, it embraces our limits. Where we end, and other life begins. We learn to navigate these limits in life: we must eat enough, we must stop and rest, we must drink enough water. We must also not take up too much space, we must respect where we end and where another life begins. But to navigate these limits at death, the movement from dust to dust, to navigate the return from human to humus, is to appreciate life, the land on which we depend, and time as a gift. Natural burial is a way to participate in the time-tested, grounded-in-time, circle of life.
Thank you for spending some time wondering with me.
Tony