Several years ago I did a wedding on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, a one-hundred-kilometer stretch of coastland where a wild shoreline of sandy coves and pebble beaches and rocky shoals meets a puzzlework of primeval rain forest and fjordlike escarpments. The coast is dotted with small villages where prawn trappers, beachcombers, artists, and eccentrics dwell.
The wedding ceremony took place far above the clawlike curve of a rock harbor, in a wooden Anglican church built into a cleft of the steep mountain slope.
The inside of the church was decorated in wildflowers gathered from the hills and garden flowers garnered from local homes. The bride wore a simple but elegant white dress, the groom his own suit. The service had a beautiful simplicity to it, like something hand-carved.
The reception was held outdoors on property the bride’s family owned, a promontory that jutted out into a harbor, with a large lawn bordered on two sides by rocky shore and blue-green sea. Sailboats crisscrossed out where the breeze cut unhindered over the water. That same breeze, gentle and fragrant, braided its way over us. The guests gathered on the lawn. Laughter. The ping of crystal. The smell of Cajun shrimp frying over hickory coals. The couple, Edenic in their joy, moving among us, speaking and receiving benediction.
The day was perfect.
There I met a young philosophy student, perhaps in his early twenties, tall and healthy and good-looking. He asked if I really believed all that religious stuff I had spouted back up at the church. I said I did. He smirked. I asked him what he believed.
“I tried your religion for a while,” he said, “and I found it’s just a burden to carry. You know what I’ve figured out? Life justifies living. Life is its own reward and explanation. I don’t need some pie-in-the-sky mirage to keep me going. This life has enough pleasure and mystery and adventure in it not to need anything else to account for it. Life justifies living.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Today, here, now. Feel that breeze. Smell the shrimp cooking.
“Only, I’m thinking about someone I met last February. Richard was 44, looked 60, and had been living on the streets since he was 12. He was a junkie. To support his habit, he was a male prostitute until he got too old and ugly and diseased for that. Now he had AIDS, and he was dying. He came by the church, looking for prayer, money, food, someone to talk to, odd jobs to do. I helped him out a little.
“The last time I saw Richard was on a gray, rainy day. I bought him a bus ticket and put him on the bus. He was going to his mother’s home in Calgary. He hadn’t spoken with her in almost 15 years, but he was hoping he could go home to die. Richard and I sat in my car, waiting for the bus. The rain drummed heavy on the hood and made the windshield opaque, and inside the car the windows steamed up with our breath. Richard was weeping, weeping and shaking. Almost incoherent, he sputtered, ‘I wish I’d never been born. My whole life has been a mistake. My whole life has been a misery.’
“I’m thinking about Richard. And I’m thinking about Ernie. Ernie was a man on the rise. While still in his twenties, he was already vice president of a thriving national business. He was tough minded, hard driving, prodigiously skilled, hugely ambitious. A superb athlete, he was a natural at any sport. He had a beautiful wife.
“They were unable to have children of their own, so they adopted four of them, three from Africa and one from Mexico. On the day the fourth adoption became final, Ernie got the results back from some medical tests he had undergone to account for some dizziness, blurring of eyesight, tingling and numbing in his hands. The tests came back with stunning news: Ernie had multiple sclerosis.
“Two months ago I sat with Ernie. One of his children is selling drugs in Vancouver and is wanted by the police. Another is in a reform school in Oregon, and if he steps out of line even once, he goes to jail. Ernie is now in his early forties. His once powerful and agile body is twisted, rigid, spasmodic, rawboned. His speech is so shattered that it takes me at least three tries to understand the simplest utterance. It takes him half an hour to eat half a sandwich, and after every bite he nearly chokes.
“Yes, I’m thinking about Richard and Ernie. And I have a question about your philosophy. How exactly do I explain to them that life justifies living?”
The young philosophy student had no response. He said he’d have to think about it and get back to me. I gave him my address and asked him to write me when he came up with something. I never heard from him.
Because life does not justify living.
Eternity does.
Reprinted by permission from Things Unseen by Mark Buchanan (Multnomah, 2002).
Mark Buchanan is pastor of New Life Community Baptist Church in Duncan, British Columbia.
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