Dead.

I walked past a dead body last term. Sometimes, I can't get him out of my mind. There he was: propped up against a store door. Just him. No one around but an ambulance guy. No blood. No life. Just a sunken, half-smashed face; skin paler than a regular Brit--and vacant eyes. A little lopsided, like a rag-doll flung and forgotten. To me he is nameless. We share no history. I can walk on by, my life unaffected.

Yup. He's dead. Just like the billions before him. "So what?" I think callously. But I want to vomit.

He represents the universal human. Billions have died before him. But seeing his eyes wide open, watching me--this lone corpse--I stared at Death. In one human, I saw all humans.

His mutually souless and soulful stare--I want to forget it. But I hope I always remember. In that stare he accussed me of the crime of robbing life. Were I the corpse and not the passerby, to what would my life have amounted? A pile a books. A pile of hours in a library. A pile of brains, splattered, not shared.

Adam became a living Nephesh. Death reigned from the time of Adam. We weren't created to die. If we weren't created to die, what were we created to do?

Love.

Love God. Love His creation. Love every person you walk past. Love. Is love life? Is life love? Who ever lives in Love, lives in God. To live is Christ. To die is gain. I no longer live. Christi lives in me. Love.

Death puts Life into perspective.