Not all that long ago, I spoke on the phone with a friend of mine back home in Georgia. After a few moments, my friend informed me that her beloved grandmother had terminal cancer. After a few moments of tears and grief, I declared, “Well, I guess the truth of the matter is that we are all terminal.”
Life in the physical sense is always terminal. The truth is that we all die. Death is a known quantity. However, I think the bigger question is: Will we all live? It seems that most people waste their lives with things that matter very little to them or others. It seems that most people simply don’t live they just exist. If our disposition to life is ever going to change then we must arrive at the terminal. If we are to truly live…If we are to fill life with life…then we must remember that life is terminal and we must put meaningful life into the time that we have…we must arrive at the terminal.
We have spoken often about the need to leave behind the identities, borders and boundaries to go to the borderland where we can be the queer that God has created us to be. That borderland between all the identities, borders and boundaries imposed on us is the terminal that can take us to other places. The terminal is a place of transit that can take us to higher places of living. When we realize that all of these categories, binaries and dualisms that we try to keep up are all fading away, we gain the freedom to transcend them and be the unique queer that God has made us to be. In the realization that life is terminal and so are all these useless categories…we start to learn how to live as God meant us to live…as us.
I believe in resurrection. If we dare go to the terminal…that place of transit…I believe that Jesus can resurrect our lives and bring us to a place of true living.
Jesus challenges us as such in Matthew 6:30, “And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t God more surely care for you?”
Have courage my friends…let go…you will be cared for…and embrace the terminal.
Amen.
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