I have not seen David Cunningham in a while, but my
memories of him are good and strong. As
different as our interests were we often found common ground in sharing our
experiences of having gone to UC Berkeley in very different eras and our
enthusiasm for bike riding and other vigorous activities. (I regularly marveled
at the way he would ride from Pasadena to Newport Beach and back.) I am not and
will never be a sailor, but you could not spend much time with David without
experiencing first-hand his love of the sea.
I remember David as not only physically vigorous but
interpersonally compassionate and gracious. As a natural introvert, I marvel at
those so at ease in the world. Even a cursory look at the short biography
printed in the service leaflet will suggest the range and scope of his
friendships and affiliations. David was a man of the sea and a man of his
world.
As time as gone by, I suppose the greatest way I have come
to see David is through his children. It has not been my fortune really to know
David, Robert, and Lesley, but I count Alexandra, Sarah, Mollie, and Dan as
good friends. Whatever great professional and personal achievements David may
have attained, his seven children and thirteen grandchildren provide more than
a legacy: they are an ongoing gift to the world and a testament to the kind of
person he aspired to be.
We are gathered this afternoon both to give thanks for
David’s life and to bid him goodbye. There will be time at the reception to
share more personal memories and anecdotes. But right now it is time to reflect
together for a bit on how we make sense of David’s life and death in the light
of some more transcendent realities. We have heard four readings just now—three
from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, one from the Buddhist sutras—and I
ask you to join me as we think briefly together on what those texts might have
to say to us in the wake of David’s passing.
The readings from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes
and Buddhism’s Wisdom at the Time of Death sutra help us understand that you
and I human beings are caught up in something that is larger and more
mysterious than we can finally ever take in. “For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven. . . . a time to mourn, and a time to
dance. “ Therefore, says the preacher, there is nothing better for us “than to be
happy and enjoy [our]selves as long as we live.” [Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13] In a
similar vein, the Wisdom at the Time of Death sutra reminds us that “All
entities are impermanent and illusory/Cultivate the understanding of non-attachment.”
It is the shared wisdom of the world’s religious traditions
that you and I are finite, fragile, dependent creatures. Though our culture
tries mightily to convince us that we can be ever powerful and always in
control, the facts appear to be otherwise. We all naturally want to have lives
of happiness without pain, and we all naturally want to arrest the flow of time
and fix things in the moments when we had things exactly the way we wanted
them. But both the biblical and Buddhist traditions want us to see things
differently. “For everything there is a season.” “All entities are impermanent
and illusory.” We cannot control either time’s flow or its effects. We need to
enjoy life as it is and cultivate non-attachment.
The first truth we hear today—and it’s a hard one—is that
David did not spend his last years in a way that either he or we would have
wanted or predicted. He was diminished during those years, and his children had
to exercise a great deal of proactive and compassionate care on his behalf. And
if we are attentive to what scripture and sutra are saying, we will resist the
temptation to see the whole of David’s through the lens of his final diminishment.
Instead, if we hear those texts aright, we will learn to see both David and
ourselves in all our fullness and will honor the entire sweep of time as it
flows through all our lives.
That’s the first truth, and here’s a second: in Matthew’s gospel [Matthew 7:24-27], Jesus
invites us to become like the wise person who built their house on a rock: “The
rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it
did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.” Surely these verses are here to remind us that
David, like the wise person, was a builder. But more importantly they serve to
show us the other side of what Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom at the Time of Death
sutra are saying. Yes, life is transitory and impermanent, and yes there is a
season for everything, but it is also true that how you and I spend our lives
and our time matters. We can neither control our lives nor fix our times, but
we can, over the course of a lifetime, be part of something greater and incrementally
build something that will survive us. Our buildings may or may not outlive us.
But our compassionate deeds, our loving relationships, our going outside of
ourselves on behalf of others—these things will last and will become something
like the house that did not fall in the onslaught of rain, floods, and winds.
We are transitory and impermanent, but the people we love and the things we
cherish survive us. And that is no small legacy.
And this second truth leads to a third, suggested both in
Buddhist and Christian text. “All phenomena are naturally luminous and sacred/Cultivate
the understanding of seeing things as they are.” “For now we see in a mirror,
dimly, but then we will see face to face.” It is not only that we do not
control time or events. It is also that even in the midst of them we fail fully
to understand them. To live faithfully is to live in acknowledgment of the
limitations of our perception and in hope of a truth that will be revealed. As
Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, we see only partially. Our hope is that we
know fully once all things have been revealed. For David as for all of us,
death opens us up to a contemplation of what he called “the mysteries of the
universe”.
While you and I await the ultimate unveiling of those
mysteries, we can learn to trust and live into the luminosity and sacredness of
all things now. In our dim mirror view the transitory and impermanent things of
this world usually grab all our attention, while the enduring ones often escape
our notice. As we reflect together on David’s life and death, we get a glimpse
of that ultimate truth: here, now, we can enjoy life as it is given to us. We
can experience the luminous and sacred joy of life in our connections with each
other and the world we have been given to share together. For now, we know only
in part. But when the complete comes, we will know fully.
The death of anyone we love—even when expected--is always
a shock, but inside that shock lies an invitation to see into the depth and the
meaning of life. We are finite and fragile, but we are not alone. We are
invited to build the houses of our lives on the rock of the love which lies at
the heart of the universe. And we are invited to look and move into the depth
of that love as we move from the dim mirror of life’s distractions to the offer
to see God and each other face to face.
I have seen the impact of David’s life revealed in the
kind of friendships he treasured and in the wonderful children and
grandchildren he has given us all. Life and death are mysteries, but every once
in a while we get to pull back the veil and get a glimpse of things as they
are. I am grateful for this glimpse of the larger truths into which David’s
life has drawn us, and I will always treasure his great gift to us all of the
ongoing blessing of his children and grandchildren in the world. For David, and
for those he knew and loved, we proceed now, together, to give thanks. Amen.
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