Pagans say birth and death are one. What does that mean?
A If you have the opportunity to be present at the birth of a child or witness someone’s death, you can understand. Birth is, of course, tremendously joyful and death is sorrowful, but with both events there is a sense of a gate opening and a transition happening. Birth and death are both processes that totally take over. They’re more important than anything else going on. You may have planned to go out to a movie that night, but if your friend is giving birth or your mother is dying and you’re called to that bedside, it’s the kind of thing you drop everything for. And there’s that sense of a vigil, of waiting for an opening, for something to take place.
If you have the opportunity to be present at the birth of a child or witness someone’s death, you can understand. Birth is, of course, tremendously joyful and death is sorrowful, but with both events there is a sense of a gate opening and a transition happening. Birth and death are both processes that totally take over. They’re more important than anything else going on. You may have planned to go out to a movie that night, but if your friend is giving birth or your mother is dying and you’re called to that bedside, it’s the kind of thing you drop everything for. And there’s that sense of a vigil, of waiting for an opening, for something to take place.
