The Ordeal of Existence

     Yahweh my God, I call for help all day, I weep to you all night;  may my prayer reach you; hear my cries for help; for my soul is all troubled, my life is on the brink of Sheol; I am numbered among those who go down to the Pit, a man bereft of strength:  a man alone, down among the dead, among the slaughtered in their graves, among those you have forgotten, those deprived of you protecting hand.

     You have plunged me to the bottom of the pit, to its darkest, deepest place, weighed down by your anger, drowned beneath your waves.

     You have turned my friends against me and made me repulsive to them; in prison and unable to escape, my eyes are worn out with suffering.

     Yahweh, I invoke you all day, I stretch out my hand to you:  are your marvels meant for the dead, can ghosts rise up to praise you?

     Who talks of your love in the grave,  of your faithfulness in the place of perdition?  Do they hear about your marvels in the dark, about your righteousness in the land of oblivion?

     But I am here, calling for your help, praying to you every morning:  why do you reject me?  Why do you hide your face from me?

     Wretched, slowly dying since my youth, I bore your terrors--now I am exhausted; your anger overwhelmed me, and you destroy me with your terrors, whihc, like a flood, were around me all day long, all together closing in on me.  You have turned my friends and neighbors against me, now darkness is my one companion left.

-- Psalm 88

...let us turn to a simple contemplation of man's estate in its ordinary conditions, that may occur from things which befall us whether we want them to or not....How often, then have fires consumed the living!  How often have wild beasts torn men in pieces, whether in their own forests or in the heart of cities, when they have happened to escape from their dens!  How many have fallen by the robber's sword!  How many have suffered at the hands of enemies the death of the cross.... 

-- Tertullian, Ad Martyras

On the Brevity of Life

When compared with the stretch of time unknown to us, O King, the present life of men on earth is like the flight of a single sparrow through the hall where, in winter, you sit with your captains and ministers.  Entering at one door and leaving by another, while it is inside untouched by the wintry storm; but this brief interval of calm is over in a moment, and it returns to the winter whence it came, vanishing from your site.  Man's life is similar; and of what follows it, or what went before, we are utterly ignorant.

--Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History

Bewail not much, my parents! me, the prey

Of ruthless Hades, and sepulchred here.

An infant, in my fifth scarce finished year,

He found all sportive, innocent, and gay,

Your young Callimachus; and if I knew

Not many joys, my griefs also were few.

-- Lucian

All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven.  A time to be born and a time to die.  A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.  A time to kill, and a time to heal.  A time to destroy, and a time to build.  A time to weep, and a time to laugh.  A time to mourn, and a time to dance.  A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather.  A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.  A time to get, and a time to lose.  A time to keep, and a time to cast away.

-- Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

Man, born of woman, has a short life yet has his fill of sorrow.  He blossoms, and he withers, like a flower; fleeting as a shadow, transient.  And is this what you deign to turn your gaze on, him that you would bring before you to be judged? Who can bring the clean out of the unclean? No man alive!  Since man's days are measured out, since his tale of months depends on you, since you assign him bounds he cannot pass, turn your eyes from him, leave him alone, like a hired drudge, to finish his day.

     There is always hope for a tree:  when felled, it can start its life again; its shoots continue to sprout.  Its roots may be decayed in the earth, its stump withering in the soil, but let it scent the water, and it buds, and puts out braches like a plant new set.  But man?  He dies and lifeless remains; man breathes his last, and then where is he?

     The waters of the seas may disappear, all the rivers may run dry or drain away; but man, once in his resting place, will never rise again.  The heavens will wear away before he wakes , befreo he rises from his sleep.

Job 14:1-12

As a human being, you are born and you are destined to die.  Where will you go to escape death?  What will you do to escape it?  So that your Lord might comfort you in your necessary subjection to death, of his own good pleasure, he condescended to die.  When you see Christ lying dead, are you reluctant to die?  Die then you must:  you have no means of escape.  Be it today, be it tomorrow; it is to be--the debt must be paid.  What, then, does it gain a person by fearing, fleeing, hiding himself from discovery by his enemies?  Dies he get exemption from death?  No, simply that he may die a little later.  He does not get security against his debt, but just a little respite from paying it.  Put it off as long as you please, the thing so delayed will come at last.

-- St. Augustine, On the Gospel of John

"Oh, father Utnapishtim, you who have entered the assembly of the gods, I wish to question you concerning the living and the dead, how shall I find the life for which I am searching?

    Utnapishtim said, "There is no permanence.  Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time?  Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep forever, does the flood-time of rivers endure?  It is only the nymph of the dragonfly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory.  From the days of old there is no permanence.  The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death.  What is there between master and servant when both have fulfilled their doom?  When the Anunnaki, the judges, come together, and Mammetun, the mother of destinies, together they decree the fates of men.  Life and death they allot, but the day of death they do not disclose."

-- The Epic of Gilgamesh

Mortal man, you have been a citizen in this great City; what does it matter to you whether for five of fifty years?   For what is according to its law is equal for every man.  Why is it hard, then, if Nature who brought you in, and no despot nor unjust judge, sends you out of the city--as though the master of the show, who engaged an actor, were to dismiss him from the stage?

     "But I have not spoken my five acts, only three."  What you say is true, but in life three acts are the whole play.  For He determines the perfect whole, the cause yesterday of your composition, today of your dissolution; you are the cause of neither.  Leave the stage, therefore, and be reconciled, for He also who lets his servant depart is reconciled.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Death and Nothingness

After death nothing is, and nothing death:

The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.

Let the ambitious zealot lay aside

His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;

Let slavish souls lay by their fear,

Nor be concerned which way nor where

After this life they shall be hurled.

Dead, we become the lumber of the world,

And to that mass of matter shall be swept

Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.

Devouring time swallows us whole;

Impartial death confounds boudy and soul.

For Hell and the foul fiend that rules

God's everlasting fiery jails

(Devised by rougues, dreaded by fools),

With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,

Are senseless stories, idle tales,

Dreams, whimseys, and no more.

-- Seneca, Troades

Death and Hope

Death is before me today

Like the recovery of a sick man,

Like the going forth into a garden after sickness

Death is before me today

Like the odor of myrrh,

Like sitting under a sail on a windy day.

Death is before me today

Like the course of the freshet,

Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today

As a man longs to see his house

When he has spent years in captivity.

-- Pyramid Texts (3000 BC)

Now no more shall a glad home and a true wife welcome you, nor darling children race to snatch you first kisses and touch your heart with a sweet and silent content:  no more may you be prosperous in your doings and serve as a defense to those you love; 'alas and woe!' say they, 'one disastrous day has taken all these prizes of your life away from you'.  

     But they do not add this 'and now no more does any longing for these things trouble you.'  If they clearly understood this and were able to express it so, they would release themselves from great heartache and fear.  'As you dwell in the sleep of death, you will be so for the rest of the ages, severed from all weary pains; but we, while we watched you turn to ash on the awful pyre, groaned with unappeasable sorrow, and time shall never be able to rid our heart of anguish!' 

    Let us ask this of him:  what is there that is so bitter, if sleep and peace be the end of life, to make one fade away in never-ending grief?

--Lucretius