This chance

I talked about the suicide to my colleagues. They described these conversations as "most terrible and hideous." And I tell them, well, at some point we have to face the dark side of life which is our shadow.

Of the human shadow, Carl Jung wrote: "Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected."

Ignorance of the shadow gives it power because once it comes to our awareness we begin to face it. Its power disappears gradually.

As I talk to close friends and family about it, I was surprised to know the number of people who have friends and relatives who have chosen this way to leave the world. In fact one of my very dear friends told me she had attempted suicide so many years ago.

A companion on the path wrote to me: "Suicide leaves everyone guilty of neglect… And beyond the guilt, I think we all recognize in our subconscious the extreme wish to "get out and do it now". It is focusing on the primal instinct of survival that blocks the human process of exploring suicide."

I feel blessed to be surrounded by friends with different experiences and who offer me such insights at times like this. I don't feel guilt about my colleague's decision to take her life. I feel a terrible sense of loss and waste. And as I reflect on this loss, I remember the words of Yun-Men Wen-Yen a Chinese Zen master who lived more than a thousand years ago.

"Life is precious; if you miss this chance, it may take a billion eons before you receive a human body again. If even a worldly man like Confucius said, "He who realizes the Tao in the morning can die content in the evening,"...Please do your best, and take good care of yourself."

Suicide

We entered seminary together in the fall of 2003. Over the years I took several classes together with her.

I wrote a joint paper with her in the winter of 2005 when we took the last UU Polity course that Peter Raible taught.

I remember her forthrightness, her humor, her heart for the poor. She volunteered at Tent City on several occasions. She participated in her church where she touched many lives.

She was a single mother of a 12-year-old boy. I remember she showed me her son's picture and told me how much she loved him.

I was at the grieving ceremony on Thursday night at the Woodinville UU church where I lighted a candle for her.

I am sad that she chose that final and absolute way to leave this world. I hope that her death will not be in vain. That through her death we will go deeper in our understanding of what it is to be there for one another, what it is to be a true community, in a suicide economy.