Curtis Klingle

The Great Questions

I found myself deeply moved by a poem I recently received. My friend, Richard Sirman poignantly captured the observations of the “Sky” as he peered into the human heart. “I Am the Sky,” is beautifully written and this anthropomorphic verse opens a doorway into the philosophical and spiritual realm.

Though I loved the poem in its entirety, I must admit that it was very early in the poem when I sensed my thoughts had been captured, almost vehemently so. The call of those words was so strong that I had to force myself to continue on through the poem. Stanzas four and five were so piercing and so hauntingly familiar; I recognized these words as describing mirrored thoughts of my own.

“I have seen you searching.

At twilight, when the world hangs between states,

when your heart feels heaviest with questions

no earthbound voice can answer.

I have seen you looking.

Each pair of eyes that ever lifted toward me

asked the same silent thing:

Am I alone?

Do I matter?

Will I be remembered when I’m gone?”

Richard Sirman, I am the Sky

I reflected upon those lines again and again. Any thinking human being has asked these same questions or some variant of them. They are among the great philosophical queries into the mysteries of this life. As I continued to study Sirman’s poem, I was drawn deeper into thought. I sensed my brain trying to find other thoughts, memories, links to these questions, almost as if I could feel the neurons and synapses working. Curiously, what came to mind was a painting by Paul Gauguin. Understand, I am no aficionado of art, I just don’t have the “eye” for it. So, for me to form a link between Sirman’s words and a piece of art was indeed unusual; but this painting fits the very definition of unusual. It is a depiction of the subject matter of life and death, and I find the painting dark, and somewhat disturbing in its portrayal of the human life cycle. But it is not the painting per se that captivates me, it is the inscription Gauguin placed in the upper left corner:

“D’où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous,”

These wordstranslated into English ask, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

I find that as I age, these questions and those that are queried in the poem increase in their importance. As time passes, I sense an urgency that intensifies as they beckon me to answer them for myself. But the answers to these questions are elusive, and frustratingly so. Like a drowning man in a tumultuous sea trying to grasp the edge of a lifeboat, my fingertips brush against them but they stay teasingly just out of reach. Following each failed attempt to lay hold of them, I watch with a mixture of sorrow and relief as they drift away. What follows is not acquiescence mind you, but the immersion in a brief respite between my encounters with them. In this rest, my mind gathers the strength to wrestle with them once again, for I know full well they will appear suddenly, without warning, and interrupt my slumber demanding my attention.

There are days when I’m scrambling just to make sense of the moment, and deep thought becomes tenuous at best, let alone probing these questions. And there are other days when I reject thoughts of the preternatural and flee from them. I feel fear mixed among these thoughts and my blood runs cold, for these musings are always tainted with the trepidation of my own impending encounter with death.

“Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me…” Emily Dickenson.

These questions have driven men to despair, even madness. They create travail in the soul. However, it is the pursuit of the answers to these same questions where one may find the transcendental and may also find peace. Isn’t that what we seek: Peace? Peace from the sufferings of life, all of the pain, both physical and emotional, freedom from the weight of grief, to be emancipated from the very tragedy of existence? The answers to these questions are the path to experiencing the Numinous, the doorway to the mind of the Creator; it is where we find the ability to hear that still small voice of God. (1 King 19:11-13)

In his poem, Sirman grasped what I would deem as one of the great questions:

“Will I be remembered when I’m gone?”

I think to be remembered is the one thing we all desire. I sometimes wonder if our greatest fear is not so much the prospect of death, as it is the horror of being forgotten. See how troubling it is to the mind when you consider the thought of not being remembered? No thought of you to ever cross another’s mind. To be forgotten would be as if you had been cast into the void, or as if you had never existed.

What we find in remembrance is that there is something akin to immortality within it. I think of those who have gone before me: my mother and father, my grandparents, a devoted aunt, uncles, and cousins who I adored, a beautiful sister, a wheelchair bound little girl who I loved dearly, plus a myriad of friends. I am carrying the memory of each of them, but it is not simply their memory, it is something more, something much more intimate. It is a part of them that has been taken into my soul. They are with me, even now. When you recall a memory of someone in a specific setting, does it not sometimes feel as if they are present? If the soul never dies, then it follows that this piece of the loved one also lives on in us. I believe we can even surmise that they are still alive in that particular moment; that moment in time forever echoing and reverberating throughout eternity.

We are constructs of our memories, amalgamations of our experiences. These memories and experiences are often influenced or affected by others and in them they live on. We each have these innumerable immortal spirits drifting past the windows of our minds. Some are easily seen, while the view of others is somewhat obscured, as if a diaphanous veil separates us from them. But even they can slowly be brought into focus. As we recall them, what we find is that not all of these memories are good, and some experiences even enter the realm of nightmare. Some of these are benevolent ghosts while others are malevolent specters. We are careless beings, not realizing or possibly ignoring the fact that we have a far greater effect on one another than we realize. That glare or that callous word can create as lasting a scar as a laceration or an incised wound. Conversely, a smile, a kind word, a gentle kiss, can carry another’s love for a lifetime and beyond.

As I continue in this vein of thought I discover that the question of, “Will I be remembered when I’m gone?” draws my attention; it screams to be understood. I slowly discern that this question encapsulates yet two more queries that are intimately entwined:

“How will I be remembered?”

and,

“Did I make a difference?”  

Even now as I pen these words, I can sense the heaviness growing in my heart. I wonder what effect I have had on those in my past, and how I am affecting those in the present. My mind is immediately bombarded with a deluge of instances when I was less than benevolent, some even cruel. 

“How will I be remembered?”

I want to be remembered, and I desire that remembrance to be one of love and compassion. I want to touch another person’s life with love and kindness and when they think of me, it will be to reflect upon the difference I made in their life. I want these things with every ounce of my being.

But it was not always this way.

Most of us spend our younger years in selfishness, dare I say, hedonistic ventures because we believe we will never die; any thoughts of death are superficial. Few in their younger years have a capacity for real thought or even care to think. Our desire or need for any depth of thought is kept in the shallows by our own selfishness; we are far more like Narcissus than we realize. We are enamored with ourselves and are more often than not, slaves to our emotions. We are carried about as a feather on the wind. The number of those who have any understanding of what real love is, or what living selflessly means is shamefully few. The thought of others is either consciously or subconsciously based upon what we may benefit from them, and our desire to give love is tainted by our desire to receive love in return. There is no room in our heart for anyone else.

The idolator raises his eyes to the object of his worship and finds his mirrored reflection.

Our latter years are often spent in some twisted sort of personal hell, a construct of our own design. We grieve over the people and the things we consumed to sate our desires, and in this torment, we perform a flagellation of our soul. We loathe the depravity within us and self-hatred creeps in. We spend our years of supposed maturation in regret and attempts to make reparations for the wasted life of our youth. But examine this carefully and a revelation is brought into the light: we are yet a self-absorbed horror. We believe we have shifted our sights upon others while nothing in fact has changed, it is an illusion, rather, a delusion, we are blinded by our guilt. Our focus yet remains the same; we still have our eyes upon ourselves in our introspection of the great “I am.” Self-pity is the pinnacle of pride, and it is birthed and nurtured through guilt and shame. The heart engrossed in this act may even be worse than the one focused on selfish pleasures, because in this obsessive introspection it cannot even detect the beauty around it.   

I think many come to recognize the futility of a life spent in selfish pursuits or one riddled with guilt and shame. Some will seek God and His forgiveness. Others, who have no need for some meddlesome personal Deity, embrace altruistic ventures to placate the incessant accusations of conscious; they seek the balance scales to weigh in their favor. Some will simply run away. Those that have fled seek solace and something to soothe the bitterness, their anger, and rejection; this is where we discover the agnostics, atheists, existentialists, and at the extreme, the nihilists. But even they cannot deny the desire we all share: to be remembered, and to make a difference.

As I reflect upon my thoughts, I see I have sincerely tried to maintain a fairly untainted philosophical view of these great questions. However, I have carried them as far as I can without a further comingling of my own beliefs and prejudices. It is obvious though that those very things have already seeped in here and there, and it is really not surprising. I may have even already entered the realm to the degree where one might accuse me of introducing an artifice to deceive you, to convince you that I am correct. But that is far from the case; I use no deception, no trickery. You see, we each have a paradigm through which we see the world. Like it or not, we view events in our lives and make decisions based upon that perspective. Being that I am a Christian, my world view is filtered through my beliefs about God, and the teachings of Jesus. It is through this lens that I see the word. That lens can be better described as being two lenses: the spiritual or Christlike lens, or that of the older, more primitive part of me, the part that still aligns with this world. In this Christian view, one of the two images created by these lenses will be clearer, more in focus, and superimposed upon the other. Everything I think, I see, and I do, depends upon which lens I am looking through. Even the great questions are viewed through this filter. That being said, what I shall try to do now is bring that Christlike lens into focus as I (we) continue to explore the great questions.   

I think it is curious how we each believe we are alone and the only person struggling to make sense of this life, alone and longing for another like us, someone like-minded, someone with whom we can share these thoughts. We see ourselves as some lonely island in a vast ocean. It is as if there is an impenetrably dense fog surrounding us inhibiting our view. If we could see beyond, if the fog were to lift, we would see the truth. We are far from being alone. We are but one in an archipelago without number. One among a myriad of islandic sojourners.

We each, like a knight errant, are roaming the countryside solo in search of ways to make a difference. We long to leave our mark upon the world, to rescue the captive and free the imprisoned, to defend the defenseless. All of our altruistic and heroic adventures only veil what we are truly after; we seek the answers to life and to fulfill the answers to the great questions. We discover that others have gone before us, and they point out the way. The answers we seek are found in some reliquary atop an exceedingly high mountain.

“How will I be remembered?”

“Did I make a difference?” 

The ascent to the summit is our goal. It is a long and arduous journey of which most of us merely clamber, almost continuously falling down and having to scramble back up again, but on and on we go. When we reach the top, we grasp the container yielding the holy relics. The answers we seek are held within. We gently take it in our hands and as the lid swings open, we peer inside only to find that the box is mirrored, our face looks back at us. It is then that realization comes. While we believed that these great questions, “How will ‘I’ be remembered?” “Did ‘I’ make a difference?” were selfless, we find that this is a fallacy, they only appeared to be so.

It should have been obvious that the focus remained upon myself; it was yet another selfish pursuit. Any concern with my “self” is by definition, selfish. If I am truly making a difference, then it is likely that I will not even know it, or be concerned that I am doing so, much less fret over how I will be remembered. If this is so, then what I seek is something far greater. It must be something that changes my focus. It must be something undoubtedly flavored with the selflessness I seek. For that to be so, then it must be something more, it must have the power to shift one’s eyes completely off of themselves. So, what is this “something more?”

I wrote some time ago that it is not so much a fear of death as it is a concern of leaving unfinished business behind. I deduced that this “fear” is actually the belief that I have much more love to give, and I am concerned I may not have enough time to give it. I still believe that, and I must wonder if this might be the “something more.” It is the only thing I know of that is capable of bringing about this shift of perspective, but surely it cannot be that simple. But could it? As I thought about these things what kept coming to mind was a verse from the gospel of John. In this passage, Jesus was having His last meal with His disciples. He has taken the form of the lowest of servants and washed their feet. He has made one last failed attempt at reconciling Judas, and then sent him away to earn his betrayer’s wages. He elucidates again who He is and what is coming upon His death. He predicts Peter’s denial, and the desertion of those with who He has spent the last three and a half years. His friends will abandon Him. He will be betrayed. He will be alone. He will suffer. He knows all of these things are in His immediate future, but yet, in all of this, His mind is still upon His friends, those He loves. It is in this intimate setting we also see His definition of the Sumum Bonum, the answer to all questions:

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” John 15:13  (NKJV)  

The Scotsman, Alexander MacLaren wrote one of the most beautiful biblical commentaries there is in existence. His insight and understanding of the Scriptures were, in a word, “enlightened.”  In reference to this verse he wrote,

“The divinest thing in God and that in which men can be like God, is love.”

Think about that for a moment. The epitome of divinity is love. The pathway to be like God is love. And what is God like?

God is love.

John 15:13 is one of the most misquoted and misapplied verses in Scripture. When Jesus stated, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”, He was describing sacrificial love. This is the highest love to aspire to. In the Greek language it is called “agape,” and it is the highest form of love. To the Christian, it is the love of God for human beings, the love of human beings for God, and the ability to love one another completely and sacrificially.

Contrary to popular belief, love is not an emotion; love is an act of the will, though feelings and emotions often accompany it. It is the preference of another over ourselves. I do not think this level of love is possible outside of a relationship with God. What is more, He further raised the bar to such a degree that it is virtually impossible to love outside of connection to Him. Remember, He also said to love your enemies:

Matthew 5:44-45 “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven…”

This is not a mere request, but an edict. No religion has required its adherents to love their enemies, save Christianity.

We must realize that all of the Ten Commandments can be fulfilled if we love. Jesus stated this very thing when He was asked what the greatest commandment was, Matthew 22:36-40, “’Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: 

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’”

Loving God. Loving our neighbor. Loving our enemies. And the summation of living a life of love is, perfection.

“Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

To submit your life for another is a sacrifice of the highest magnitude. As we look at what Jesus taught about love, that is exactly what was taking place. The degree of love to perform this act is immeasurable.

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” John 15:13

While there was no greater sacrifice than that made by Jesus Christ, I believe we can safely infer that Jesus had something additional in mind in this statement. There were in fact, two sacrifices and Jesus performed both as examples of how we are to live. I ask you, “Would you die for your beloved?” You undoubtedly would respond with a resounding, “Yes!” And now I ask you an even greater question, “Would you live for the beloved?”

To live for someone is a daily, actually, a moment by moment sacrifice of your life for them. It is dying to your self. Remember, love is an act of the will and it is not based upon our fleeting and whimsical emotions. It is a commission of Christ to each of us. To live for another is to make a difference in their life. It is in this submission of our lives, these acts of love, when we make a difference in the lives of those we love. We not only find the answers to the great questions, but we reach a state where they are no longer a point of concern. We have made a difference not for the goal of being remembered, but simply because we loved. We have, in essence, laid down our life for another.

As I reflect upon these thoughts and the journey which I have traveled with them, I find that it is truly this simple. We have taken the great question of,

“Will I be remembered?” and reduced it to,

“How will I be remembered?” and “Did I make a difference?”

and in the distillation of these two, we have reduced it to a single word:

Love.  

Near the beginning of this essay, I wrote about hearing God’s still small voice, and I often think I think about the prophet Elijah and His encounter with God. Whether we realize it or not, we are all seeking to hear from Him. In Him is where we find the peace and joy we have sought after. He is what we were seeking on the mountain top. We find that He is the One we want most to remember us. That still small voice will speak to us, and we will hear that long sought after accolade, “Well done good and faithful servant.” It is then that I believe we will experience the fullness of the peace and joy, the remembrance we seek, and receive the realization that we did make a difference.

I will be remembered. I did make a difference. I loved.  

“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.” Henry Drummond, The Greatest Thing in the World

Curtis Klingle

Postscript- I have included Sirman’s poem, I am the Sky in its entirety for your enjoyment.   

I Am the Sky

I am the endless blue—vast, reaching,

ancient witness to all that breathes.

I am the night’s dark canvas, punctured by light

that traveled millions of years to meet your eyes.

Look up. I have been waiting for you.

When you were small, you lay in summer grass,

finding shapes in my clouds, giving names

to what has no name. You pointed skyward,

told stories of bears and warriors and ships,

while I held your wonder like a fragile bird.

I have seen you searching.

At twilight, when the world hangs between states,

when your heart feels heaviest with questions

no earthbound voice can answer.

I have seen you looking.

Each pair of eyes that ever lifted toward me

asked the same silent thing:

Am I alone?

Do I matter?

Will I be remembered when I’m gone?

I carry the breath of everyone who ever lived,

the last exhale of the dinosaurs,

the first cry of Babylon’s children,

the whispered prayers of those who built the pyramids.

The air in your lungs now once filled lungs long turned to dust.

You are not separate from anything.

The stars you see aren’t where they appear to be—

light distorted through time, images of what was,

not what is. Like your memories,

beautiful ghosts that shape your now.

I’ve watched you fall in love beneath me,

seen you weep under my rain,

observed your solitary walks when life became too loud.

I’ve been with you always, your constant companion,

though you rarely notice me at all.

At night when sleep won’t come and the ceiling

becomes a screen for your projected fears,

remember—I am just beyond those walls,

surrounding all you know, holding every broken dream,

every forgotten promise, every moment of grace.

You will return to me.

Not as failure, not as ending,

but as transformation.

What falls from you is always caught.

What rises from you never truly leaves.

The tears that streak your face become my clouds.

Your final breath joins my currents.

I am the sky that watched your first steps,

that will receive your last glance,

that has always been your home.

Look up.

I have been waiting for you all along.

Richard Sirman