The Day We Die

The day we die
the wind comes down
to take away
our footprints.

The wind makes dust
to cover up
the marks we left
while walking.

For otherwise,
the thing would seem
as if we were
still live.

Therefore the wind
is he who comes
to blow away
our footprints.

Southern Bushmen, Africa

Song Lines

“In Islam, and especially among the Sufi Orders, – the action or rhythm of walking was used as a technique for dissolving he attachments of the world and allowing men to lose themselves in God. The aim of a dervish was to become a ‘dead man walking’: one whose body stays alive on the earth yet whose soul is already in Heaven. A Sufi manual says that towards the end of his journey, the dervish become the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveler following his own free will.”

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin (1940 – 1989) was an English writer, novelist and journalist who interviewed figures such as Indira Gandhi and Andre Malraux. His best known works are “In Patagonia” and “The Songlines.”

These excerpts present two complementary perspectives of the life journey. In the first, we are reminded that whether we be princes or paupers the material aspects of life and any marks we make on it all pass away. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”  Time is a wind that sweeps away all our footprints. The excerpt from Song Lines has the beautiful phrase “dead man walking.” When we rise above the perception that the world is all there is and remember our divine home, we are no longer the actor who is living his or her life, but the vehicle for life to walk through this experience on earth.

“I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14