Unrepeatable Moments

Recently, I found out that Bishop Jack Spong has a new book due to be released later this year entitled Eternal Life: Pious Dream or Realistic Hope? which I am really looking forward to reading. Have read several of Jack's previous works, I'm sure that he'll be expounding on several ideas and themes that have been covered in various forms in the past.

He actually used the debate over the title of his book - a debate held with his editors and publishers at Harper, no less - as the crux of his weekly column issue today, and provided a very interesting look at the way something as simple as the selection of a few words could cause so much disagreement. I don't know what I was expecting when I read the column, other than an outline of the debate, a brief recap of what the book will be covering, and a few other key themes.

As always, though, someone else had a different idea and decided to throw me a curve ball.

That curve came in the form of an otherwise obscure sentence on page two of the column, which read, "Death gives passion to life by making every moment unrepeatable and calls me to live life to its fullest."

Death gives passion to life by making every moment unrepeatable.

For whatever reason, that small sentence tucked in the middle of a huge paragraph reached out and tripped me as I went running by that portion of the article. I read it two, three, even four times.

Making every moment unrepeatable.

Everyone knows the saying about living life to the fullest, and to make the most of every moment. However, I've never seen it put in such an intriguing way - using a word like "passion" in explaining how to savor each moment. People think of passion in some pretty obvious ways: passion for a job, passion for a hobby, passion for a favorite sports team, passion in romance.

But passion being given to life because of death - that's something entirely new and different.

Being passionate about a moment, and death being a gift. Now I really can't wait to read what else he has in this book. I have a feeling I'll be tripping often.