Living Memento Mori Part 9: Exposed
What is your greatest fear? Psychologists have asked this question over and over again. The consistent, number one answer given is “speaking before an audience.” The number two answer is “death.” When you think about what this implies, when given the choice of being the one in the coffin or eulogizing the one in the coffin, most choose the coffin. Seems funny. The issue appears to be that public speaking exposes you to criticism, rejection, humiliation, and in today’s world “being canceled.” Ostracized. When you’re dead though, what else can anyone do to you? You’re beyond their reach and besides, you don’t care.
In the 9th and 10th stations of the cross, Jesus falls for the third time. Having arrived where he is to be crucified and die, he is stripped of his clothing.
He is literally exposed.
Living Memento Mori means coming to terms with and accepting the fact that exposure in some form will take place in your life. Exposure is often thought of as an exclusively physical event. That’s what we see in the tenth station. That’s what we see taking place in hospitals. Exposure, the striping away, can also be mental, emotional, or spiritual. It can come suddenly resulting in an epiphany. It can also come incrementally in which there is a gradual awareness that our values aren’t what we think and tell others they are. It’s an awareness and reckoning that what we think we understand is off and doesn’t square with the way things really are.
The Swimmer is a strange classic movie made in the 1960’s. Rated 100% fresh by Rotten Tomatoes, it’s an allegory in which the main character decides to swim his way home eight miles away through the back yard pools of friends, acquaintances and strangers. The swimmer is on a quest of sorts. Beginning in an affluent setting, he starts out strong and enthusiastic. Soon, though, he is confronted by a series of revelations that gradually and ultimately strip him down and expose him.
A very recent account of exposure, a stripping away of the so-called promises of life is told by Martin Shaw, author, university lecturer, and mythologist. Approaching his 50th birthday, he tells how he’d been visiting a local forest near his house each evening night after night for weeks. He’d return home after a couple of hours. His final outing was to be an all-night vigil. What he saw and heard in that winter darkness led to his undoing and sudden conversion. You can read the whole story here.
Exposure in some form will eventually take place in your life. And when it does, what do you do? Living Memento Mori means facing and accepting it. For some, this means facing it daily. There’s no getting around it.
So what do you do? Remember the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector. Self-applied accolades aren’t useful. Only mercy will do.
Thanks for reading!
Curt Bumcrot, MRE
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