Hearts and Treasures, Resumes and Eulogies

So today I went back to church on a not-rushing-to-a-performance basis. I even went to a new Sunday school class. My discovery: I love church. Sure, on a Sunday morning there's always a bit of reticence to get up and get going. But it was such a relief to be there. I loved talking about creeds and prayer in a group of people where I wasn't in charge and didn't have to do anything but attend to my soul.

Well, I did have to do a thing. I was in charge of the children's moment. The sermon title was "Where Your Heart Is," the scripture from Luke 12: 22-34. It's Jesus's admonishment not to worry. Consider the lilies of the field. Do not store up treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves steal. Store up treasure in heaven. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

For the children's moment, I brought lots of cheap purses, handbags, fanny packs, and piggy banks--things I store my treasure in. Then I pulled out the cheap, hand-painted TARDIS my mother made for me out of an old Nestle's can in the 1980s. "It doesn't work as a bank to keep treasure any more," I said. "But I keep it because it shows my mother's love for me." The children's moment followed a performance of the little kids' choir. "While you were singing," I told them, "I saw all your parents and grandparents and friends video taping, leaning forward, focused on you. You're where their heart is. You're their treasure." I turned to my TARDIS. "My mom died a few years ago. But I know when I look at this that I was her treasure, that I was where her heart was. And I believe, somewhere beyond time and space, that she still treasures me as I do her."

The Pastor's sermon was great. He referenced a TED talk by David Brooks (no lefty's favorite person--no conservative's favorite either). There Brooks asks whether you're living your life according to your resume or your eulogy. What's the definition of success you're going for? What kind of accomplishment are you aiming at?

Dagnabbit, that's a good one. My father would like it. I'll be inflicting it on students.

It made me think that I don't want a eulogy. I fantasize about a "leave no trace" life, where my ultimate goal after I die is to disappear as completely and quickly as possible. I don't want a funeral. I don't want a memorial. It's a bit of nihilophilia that I'm pretty sure indexes my depression.

It's also, as my close friends remind me, a bit selfish.

I was advising a student the other day who was wondering whether to go to their graduation ceremony. They'd skipped their high school ceremony even though they were the valedictorian. That act was for them a point of pride, a way of distancing themselves from social pressures and therefore proving that they were the sort of person who resists social pressures. Fair enough. And certainly no one's going to stop you from not going to your own college graduation.

But have you ever been to one of our graduations? I asked. They had not. I think you'd find, I said, that they're less about cloying nostalgia for what was and more a communal celebration of the accomplishment. It's a way of cheering the jumping-off-point that is graduation itself. It's also, I said, a ceremony that isn't all about you. I mean, sure, you're the focus. But it's not all for your benefit. Like other life transition ceremonies--like weddings and funerals--they're almost more for everyone else rather than for the people who are the ostensible center of the event.

I should heed my own advice. There's likely a bit of childish I'll show everyone! to my funeral resistance. I won't be there one way or the other. (I don't imagine the afterlife as one in which I'm overly focused on the minutiae of earthly life.) It's about other people, not me. It is, perhaps, a thing I allow for as  way of demonstrating how I treasure those left after I go.

I dunno. I'll think about it, though, to see where my heart is on the matter.

JF