We Live in the Element of Death

Our lives are surrounded by the element of death. When we are born it is as though the hand of insensate death, from where we come, opens, just as one might open one’s fingers to release a butterfly, to permit us to enter into the world. From that palm we step forth. For the span of our lives, life asserts itself and endures only as long as it is able to do so. The moment any weakness in that assertion is evident the element of death flows into the chinks revealed until, eventually, it reclaims us and extinguishes the light of our life completely. Finally we are accepted back into the black embrace from which we came. Were you able to look at the living human race from a distance you would see a dome of light weakly pulsing the assertion of its illumination into the vast surrounding black night. In this way the race is similar to Dante’s virtuous heathens in Limbo whose only light is that which they emit through their own enlightenment, the dazzling and darkness-dispelling external light from Heaven not yet having come to them. Their light radiates a small arc into a giant and over-arching blackness stretching into a void. The overwhelming impression is that of their fragility.