With a kiss closer to death
When I was
little I could not stand the tick of the clocks. And this was not
because I had troubles with getting asleep or with my nerves, but
because the clock reminded me about the existence of time. Every tic-tac
was similar for me with a knock at the gates of death. When I lied down
in bed and only the shape of the window could be seen in the dark, then
the tick of the clock was resembling to the noise of the wheels of a
train which was bringing me to the death. One tic-tac was so short but
it was enough to plunge me into an overwhelming sadness, into a sadness
from which I did not believe to get out ever. It was awful to know that
I could not bring back the time of my life at least with a single
tic-tac. I was eating my heart out feeling how that monotone and sad
sound disappears for ever and irrecoverably into the non-existence.
I was especially living again this feeling in the evening, when I
was going to bed. But the true sadness and loneliness was overwhelming
me in the foreign houses, even at my grandmother, where a big soviet
clock got me off to sleep. Then I was thinking how depressive it would
have been to hear this kind of clocks all the day, but at the same time
I was realising that they tick even when I do not hear them. Whatever I
was doing, wherever I was going, the time was passing.
The only
meaning that I was still seeing was to observe most attentively the
passing of the time, to register, to explain it. It was the most painful
occupation of my life, but it was not in vain.
I began to see the
passing of time in everything: in leafs that fell or just moved, in
every change, in every word or gesture that were suddenly swallowed by
the past as by a swarm of piranhas. I myself was helpless and motionless
in the front of the past which was swallowing me little by little.
The passing of time can be measured by everything. I measured it by
the clothes from which I grew out, by the people who died or married.
Nothing can stop the passing of time. Even those in love can say: we are
with a touch closer to death, with an embrace, with a kiss closer to
death.
We are always closer. Many times I catch myself on the same
thought during the Liturgy, when the priests and deacons give to each
other the kiss of forgiveness and love before receiving the Eucharist,
the Body and the Blood of Christ. Then they embrace and, kissing one
another on the shoulder, say “Christ is among us”, and the other replies
“He is and will”.
How wonderful! Then they are really with a kiss
closer to death, but also closer to Life. For one thing I pray then,
that this kiss bring me closer, particularly, to Life and not to death.
Life After Death
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THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA AND THE END OF THE WORLD - by Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
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