statistics

Some of us will be statistics,
counted among the thousands
who succumbed;
no splashy send-off,
flower-strewn casket or
weeping mourners.
                                    Mother Teresa
died just a day before Princess Di,
the former passing lost in a fanfare
of glamorous grief…probably
just the way the saint wanted it,
humble to the last. 
                                And Jesus died mute
and mangled, offering no self-defense;
just another crucified prophet, whose
ignominious defeat still shocks some
from complacency.  What could he
possibly have done to deserve
such callous treatment?  Touched
a few lepers and spit on blind men’s
eyes?
          Just weeks ago a homeless man
hugged me on the street.  What if
that’s the last human contact
he ever had?

Liz McFadzean

 “If death is the end of all we do, then all we do is futile…if death defines us, so that we who came from nothing also go back to nothing, then death is a worm that curls inside our every act, like a parasite eating the lasting value out of it!...History needs a center.  But if that center is empty death, strengthless death, it cannot hold.  Things fly apart into absurdity.  Finally, every deed is hollow, ourselves mere spasms in a mindless infinity…We are the dreams the comets can’t recall….But the Creator God put a cross in the very center of human history—to BE its center, ever.  The Son of God, the gift of God, the love of God, the endless light of the self-sufficient God filled the emptiness which was death at our core….we are all together meaningless, except God touch us.”     
Walter Wangerin Jr.

Photo by Court McFadzean, New York City, 2006