It was.

Brittany’s path towards recovery had been abruptly cut short. After three months of chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative treatments that never ended, and with a bone marrow transplant on the horizon, Brittany had unexpectedly developed a massive infection that could not be controlled. She had been doing so well, and no one saw it coming. I was told that she had passed away in the early morning hours while I was still sound asleep in my warm, soft bed. My mom was on the phone when I arrived in the office. She was equally devastated not only because Brittany was my dear friend, but because she was also the niece of her best friend. It was a close inner circle. Now someone was missing from it.

As I reflect on that horrific day over four years later, I have finally come to peace with Brittany’s tragic and untimely death, though I doubt I will truly ever understand it. Yet I have realized that we have no choice other than to come to terms with death because it is an integral part of the life process. However, I do not consider Brittany to be truly gone. I believe she lives on in so many ways, and I think that we as a society are just on the threshold of understanding life beyond death and the spiritual continuance and connection that lives on in the day to day lives of everyone who knew the deceased.

In the most simplistic terms, I see Brittany in the spirits, faces, and actions of every person’s life she ever touched. I see her in her mother and how she compassionately and gently treats other people; I see her in her sister and her never ending kindness and understanding; I see her in her aunt and her eternal optimism; I see her in the many friends she had who worked so hard to keep her memory alive within a very large high school environment; and I see her in myself when I try to embrace her passion, patience, and inner peace. She lives on in all of us and always will. I have come to believe that a person’s spirit and soul are truly separate from their earthly body; I’ll never see her smiling face again other than in pictures, but I still see her every day.

During Brittany’s brief but valiant battle with cancer, she embodied so many traits to which the rest of us can only hope to aspire. She exemplified a true sense of inner grace that I had never witnessed before in any other person. Throughout her illness, she never showed any outward signs of fear, although undoubtedly she was terribly frightened. She never complained although she must have often been in excruciating pain. She was always positive and optimistic and tried to keep a smile on her face, even though I know it must have been an incredible challenge. I knew she was struggling, but she didn’t want anyone to know. She never wanted to burden anyone, even though she was facing the biggest battle anyone can ultimately face. Brittany did not have the benefit of growing old and wise, yet her spirit is endless and inspirational. At only fifteen years old, she never even had the opportunity to graduate from high school, go to college, fall in love, raise children, and live a long life.

She was only in the 9th grade, a mere freshman in high school. So what does this say about a teenager who is selfless enough to not want to impose any pain on anyone around her when she was clearly suffering? I often wonder if she thought that she might die, even though she always said that she was going to be okay, and even proclaimed that she planned to run laps around the hospital once she was finally released. Certainly, she thought of others more than herself during this very difficult time. I sometimes wish I had talked to her about death just to know more about her thoughts on the subject; I just don’t think that she ever considered death to be an option, but I’ll never know for sure.

Yet even today I continue to feel Brittany around me, just as I see her in the all people’s lives that she forever touched. She has obviously left her earthly body, but that does not mean she is not present in the lives of those who loved and continue to love her. She had such an incredibly strong spirit and it was not in any way defined by the body that she so briefly resided in; her spirit remains while it has also moved on to its next destination, no doubt to find a higher purpose. She will never truly be gone, nor will the people who knew her and loved her ever let go of what she represented and the joy she brought to their lives.

What ultimately defines a person’s spiritual being both in life and in the afterlife? Is the earthly body and spirit a completely different entity from the heavenly spirit or does it represent an ongoing continuum? Does a person’s spirit die just as the body dies? I contend that it does not because the spirit is never something you can reach out and touch. It is real, but it is not palpable, even in life. You can’t see it, touch it, taste it, hear it, or physically feel it, yet you can sense it. A person’s spirit forever defines their goodness or lack thereof in some circumstances, their impact on other people’s lives, and the innate individual qualities that make that soul unique.

A person’s spirit is not finite by any means, but rather it is all encompassing. It is the inherent essence of the soul of an individual, whether living or deceased. Could anyone truly claim that the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. is dead and gone after his inspirational, albeit abbreviated life and his infamous words, “I have a Dream”? Conversely, doesn’t the spirit of Adolph Hitler similarly still exist in the families that continue to mourn the atrocities endured by the victims of the Holocaust? A spirit is not limited by life or by death, by good or by evil, nor by a moment in time or by eternity.

In life, Brittany was indeed unique and someone many would consider to be a refreshing and optimistic soul, and certainly she continues to be the same years after her passing. No one ever had a negative thing to say about Brittany, even in an often catty high school environment. She was never among what many would consider the “popular” crowd; rather, she hung with members of the Anime Club. She was generally happier reading a book than going to the latest movie. She was quiet and introspective, scientific and analytical, not one interested in parties, dating and high school football games. Wherever she is today, I envision her working with the angels, perhaps on mathematical and scientific innovations that may eventually benefit those of us on earth. She certainly wouldn’t be happy sitting idle. She would always need a challenge and an opportunity to use her amazing brain power. God must have needed her for a much higher purpose.

Surely her untimely death has left her family devastated and questioning why this happened, especially to such a kind and innocent young person. For those of us who knew and loved her, it obviously makes no sense, and I continue to question, but in the end, know that I will someday understand. But I know for a fact that she wouldn’t want sadness or bitterness. That’s not at all what Brittany was about. I believe that she would instead hope that we look inside of ourselves and take a harder look at what purpose we want to fulfill within our own lifetimes.

Life is inherently limited. We all know that someday it will come to an end for each and every one of us. It is very, very sad when it comes to an end prematurely; at least by our standards. But God’s standards may be infinitely different from our own, and in the end, an individual’s legacy to those left behind on this earth cannot be measured by longevity. Further, it does not matter whether a person is a John F. Kennedy, an Albert Einstein, a Mother Teresa or a small town high school student, because it is not the number of lives we are able to touch, but the spirit in which we are able to do it. As long as a life is lived with a sense of true, unabashed passion, the spirit as we know it can never be extinguished in the minds of those left behind. More importantly, for reasons yet to be understood by mere mortals, that spirit has found another place in time, another purpose to fulfill, inevitably choreographed by the most divine power.

When I graduated from high school in 2008, Brittany’s mother gave me a memorable gift. Knowing my love of music and dance, she presented me with a CD by Lee Ann Womack with the feature track being “I Hope You Dance”. The lyrics are inspirational and timeless. In part, they are as follows:

“I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance –
I hope you dance, I hope you dance.” (MCA Nashville, 2000)

Brittany’s mom, whose daughter should have been in that same procession marching in cap and gown to “Pomp and Circumstance”, receiving her well earned diploma, simply wrote the message, “April, I hope you dance!” At that moment, I once again felt Brittany’s eternal presence.

There is without a doubt a higher plan, in my opinion, for every relationship we encounter on this earth. Brittany and I will see each other again someday, and I have no doubt that she will still have that beautiful, inspirational smile on her face. Still I miss her, but I do know that she is not far away. And when we do meet again, she’ll probably just say something like, “Hey there, April, I missed you, but I told you I was just fine.”

Since that terrible day in 2005 when I found out that my best friend, who was thought to be on the road to recovery, suddenly and unexpectedly lost her battle, I have done a great deal of soul searching and introspection. Sometimes I wonder how the potential and very unselfish bone marrow donor in New Jersey felt when he heard that he matched a young high school girl thousands of miles away and could save the life of this anonymous recipient. I imagine that he must have been excited yet somewhat nervous because the bone marrow extraction from the donor is said to be somewhat uncomfortable. But then I wonder how this man felt when the statistically unlikely match failed to come to fruition. I would think that this stranger must have grieved as well, or at least this is what I want to believe.

Brittany and this unknown New Jersey resident had more than bone marrow in common. Having known and loved Brittany, I knew she was kind, loving, unselfish, and generous. Even though I never knew her potential donor, he obviously embodied the same qualities. And when I say “embodied,” I mean it in a spiritual sense. If Brittany had not suffered a massive infection, a person who had never met her was willing to undergo an invasive procedure in an attempt to save her life. That is a person’s true spirit. It is what defines us, it is who we are in life and thereafter, it is the life we live while we are here on this earth and legacy we ultimately leave behind.

April Bollig is pursuing a degree in Elementary Education at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

This is what Osman Sahin does to relax. Dance. But he is no choreographer, he is a calligrapher-one who has mastered the art of Classical Turkish-Islamic calligraphy for over twenty-five years. He calls his calligraphy style “the dancing of the pen.”

His eyes, eagerly glued to the paper, anticipate his next move. His hands lift with each pen stroke, gliding to the rhythm of his breath, rising with every new thought and slowing to the pace of his heartbeat.

To many of us, calligraphy is merely fancy handwriting used to record information, but to a Turk calligraphy is much more. It is an art-a grand form of art-with its origins dating back many centuries. The Turks refer to calligraphy as Hat (pronounced like “hut”). In its literal sense, Hat means beautiful writing practiced and perfected throughout time as a way to combine spiritual and functional writing with the medium of art.

It is however the spiritual element of Hat that is most striking to viewers. Because the drawing of human figures is not favored in Islam, Muslim artists throughout time have channeled their talents toward the art of calligraphy.

“Hat is all about symmetry, harmony and measurements,” explains Osman Sahin. “It is the dance of the pen and paper. It’s music to the eyes. Hat is like composed music that soothes and refreshes the spirit and brings peace and harmony to the soul. It enables the person to reach inner tranquility.”

The origins of Hat date back to the early Islamic era when manuscripts of the Qur’an were being recorded and handwritten. However, at that time there was little emphasis on the style of writing but greater emphasis on the message being revealed. It was centuries later, during the Ottoman Era, that Turks focused on the style of writing.

It is a common saying among Muslims that “the Qur’an was revealed in Mecca, recited in Egypt and written in Istanbul.” The Ottoman Turks produced and perfected various styles of script that were passed on throughout the Muslim world.

They loved and respected the art of Hat as it flourished in the great city of Istanbul, which was at the time the focal point of the Ottoman State, and it was there that history’s finest works were produced.

Hat has been used throughout Turkey in enchanting ways to decorate palaces, mosques, museums and fountains for many centuries. The renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, referring to the art produced by Muslim calligraphers during the Andalusian period, said, “Muslim calligraphers five hundred years ago reached where I want to reach today.” In present-day Turkey, there are over twenty million artwork treasures that bear witness to this history.

The beauty present in Islamic-Turkish calligraphy is said to be a direct reflection of the inner soul of the calligrapher. As Osman Sahin himself says, “Whenever I am stressed, I pick up my pen and draw. This is because the art of Hat has a therapeutic aspect to it. During the Ottoman era, some of the sick were treated by using fine arts like Hat together with soothing Sufi music and the art of Ebru (water marbling) drawing.”

This extraordinary art form can only be executed with the use of pens made of bamboo cuttings, preferably Balinese bamboo. “The bamboo is cut at a thirty-degree angle and split in half from top to bottom,” demonstrates Osman Sahin. “Even with the technology present today, it is not possible to write better or more beautifully using anything other than bamboo. The squeaking sound you hear when using the bamboo pen is said to be the weeping of the pen. It is said that the pen weeps so as to not fall into the hands of the ignorant.”

It is no surprise that there is wonder and magic in Turkish-Islamic calligraphy. It is almost as if the art moves and comes alive. Sweet appearance follows a slow, inner flow. There is silence, yet harmonious and metaphysical music echoes. However, this music cannot be heard by the ears but must be heard within.

He breathed in and leaned back comfortably in his chair, looking deep into his finished calligraphy as it stared back at him. The dance was over, the rhythm ceased, and the music was muffled. The bamboo pen lay there on the table, weeping with heartache, unaware of when the next dance will be.

“A man was going down from Jericho, [The road from Jericho to Jerusalem was steep and winding, a place where criminals regularly assaulted travelers at the time when Jesus lived] and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest [A holy man] was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, [a religious leader] when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan [Samaritans were people who were despised by the ethnic group to whom the lawyer belonged.] while traveling came near him, and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, [two coins equal to two days wages] gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’”

Then Jesus asked the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer said to Jesus, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus then said to the lawyer, “Go and do likewise.” The moral of this story is that if one wishes to have eternal life one must be a good neighbor.

The medieval Christian monk Bernard of Clairvaux shares the great theme of the love of God with the Sufi master Rumi. A big portion of Clairvaux’s writing includes the idea that of all the attributes of God, the one most important to humankind is love. Father Clairvaux was not a poet like Rumi but a fine scholar of the Bible and found many important verses of Scripture that speak about the idea of God’s love being manifest through the actions of human beings. This love of God is expressed most graphically in the activity of being a good neighbor. He writes, “True love is precisely this: that it does not seek its own interests. And you cannot love your neighbor unless you love God. God must be loved first in order that we may love our neighbor in God” (from, On the Love of God).

From the Christian perspective neighborliness is one of the most important characteristics a follower of Jesus can possess. The two sections of the Bible, the book that gives Christians their primary guidance for living, are the Old Testament and the New Testament. These two parts of the Bible are full of verses that emphasize the high moral value placed on the practices of love of God and of neighborliness.

The Old Testament concept of neighbor often referred not only to the person who lived in the house next door to you but to anyone in your tribe. The good deeds of neighborliness were emphatically applied to care for the widow or orphan and those in need of one’s help.

God says, “If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate” (Exodus 22:26–27). Later in this same Old Testament book, speaking to the Israelites, God says, “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse a widow or orphan” (Exodus 22:21–22). It is written in the book of Deuteronomy, “Cursed be anyone who strikes down a neighbor in secret” (Deuteronomy 27: 24). The prophet Jeremiah writes, “Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place” (Jeremiah 22:3). And the prophet, Micah says, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

The New Testament concept of neighbor becomes even more universal through the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul of Tarsus. These ideas are derived from the thought that if God loves all people we should, in turn, love ourselves and especially others, including our neighbors, our enemies and those in need, the widow and orphan.

Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22: 37–40) And Paul writes, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:13–15).

Therefore, to be a true Christian one must take care to obey the first and second commandments, to love God and also to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.

We Christians have to be alert to what some call the constant presence of evil, others call this negative force in our living the devil, and still others call it the distractions of daily living; such things as television and the media in general, the North American impulse to consumerism, self-aggrandizement, preoccupation with the accumulation of wealth, politics and the list goes on and on. These distractions, against which Christians must be constantly alert, are what our holy Scriptures refer to as our “having other gods before the one God.” The reason we want to be alert to distractions such as these is that our primary goal as Christians is to first love God and second, to love our neighbors and not to place a higher value on worldly things than we do on neighborliness.

The spiritual director and Presbyterian minister, Diana Nishita Cheifetz, writes about ways people can be good neighbors in a world where air travel and the internet have brought a great diversity of culture, political ideology, ethnicity and religion together. She talks about “graceful neighboring” which is a kind of interpersonal “dancing with our diversity.”

Graceful neighboring recognizes differences while at the same time it dwells on the positive nature of our similarities. Through the art of graceful neighboring we become more aware of people different than ourselves who are on this metaphorical “dance floor” with us. This is an important, other-focused view observed in the more accomplished “dancers”. That more mature, other-focused view, dear reader, can be possessed by you and your families and friends, and by me and mine when we are all committed to interfaith dialog. When we engage in the dance of life we do not see the stranger as black or white, Christian or Jew, rich or poor; we acknowledge them as partners, people of equal value in the eyes of the one God, people who are moving to the rhythm of life with us. We gaze into their eyes, and smile and thereby recognize their humanness and our collective joy in our living together. To behave this way is to understand what Rumi and Bernard of Clairvaux would call a kind of whirling dance of faith, a moving out of darkness into light.

Graceful neighboring also recognizes differences. We do not stand too close and invade the boundaries of the others whose culture and religion ask for more room on the dance floor. Being a good neighbor is to be willing to respect the needs and differences of the dancers.

If we are able to be vehicles of graceful neighboring in these ways others will observe our joy, we will be the good dancers whom others watch and respect, and the one God will bring all of us together into a great dance of life.

Sam is a Presbyterian pastor, a husband, a father, a grandfather and a friend. He is actively involved as a member of the Advisory Board of the Austin area Institute of Interfaith Dialog, an avid bicycle rider and environmentalist.

Notes

1. Diana Nishita Cheifetz, Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, July/August 2006.

When a honeybee discovers a new source of honey within about ten metres of the hive, she returns to the hive and regurgitates drops of honey which are eagerly drunk by other bees. Then, in order to indicate the source of the drops they have just drunk, she performs an interesting sequence of movements we call the ‘round dance’. She dances round in a circle, first in one direction, then reversing and going round in the opposite direction, again reversing and so on. During the performance, other bees follow her about, holding their antenna against her abdomen. After the dance, she flies back to the food source, normally a particular flower or group of flowers. The other bees who followed the dance do not fly after her but fly out in all directions. However, fairly soon, a great number of them find the new source. They do so because they have smelt the scent of the flowers that clung to the dancer’s body and so to recognize the right kind of flower. Observing this procedure of the bees’ communication with admiration, Frisch reported that the ‘round dance’ tells the other bees to go out and search in the near neighbourhood of the hive; and the scent on the dancer’s body tells them which flowers to look for. In one experiment, bees informed by a dancer at once found the right flowers in a section of Munich Botanical Gardens where 700 different plant species were blooming.

But honeybees search for food at a greater distance than 10 metres. They have been observed to fly more than 13 km in search of honey. Remembering the average that a honeybee is only about 13 mm long, that 13 km for a bee is the equivalent of about 1,600 km for a human being. It is clear that, even for distances considerably less than 13 km, the round dance would not be much use. If the discoverer of a new food source informed the other bees to go out and search in all directions for over several kilometres, they would never find the flowers. Thus, when a bee finds food at a considerable distance, say over 100 metres from the hive, she returns to the hive, offers the honey she has found, and then performs a different kind of special dance. She dances along in a straight line for a certain distance, wagging her tail vigorously and buzzing away by means of slight vibrations of the muscles that flap her wings in flight. At the end of this wagging run, she stops buzzing and wagging her tail, circles round to one side back to where she started, does another wagging run, circles round to the opposite side, does a third wagging run and so on. This sequence of movements is called ‘tail-wagging dance’. Showing special interest in wagging runs, a number of other bees follow her round. It is known that bees cannot hear sounds in the air, however they can feel the buzzing vibrations through the surface on which the dance is performed. Like the round dance the ‘tail-wagging’ dance tells the followers of the dance that there is food available, and what flowers to look for, from the smell. But it tells them much more than this; it tells them precisely how far away the flowers are, and in exactly what direction. And so, the bees who study the dance can fly with precision to the spot indicated, even at a distance of kilometers, and find the honey-bearing flowers.

The distance to the food is conveyed by the tempo of the dance. A quick-step tempo means a relatively nearby food source, a slow tempo means a more distant one. More precisely as the distance increases, so does the duration of each wagging run. The bees who follow the dance study several wagging runs and then appear to calculate the average duration which they then translate into distance by a mathematical rule.

The ‘tail-wagging dance’ is sometimes done on a horizontal surface just outside the hive. When this happens, the dancer indicates the direction of food by aiming her run in exactly the direction of the food. She can do this if she can see the sun (or the polarized light of the blue sky, which indicates the position of the sun to bees, though not to us). So, actually she is taking up a position in which she sees the sun as the same angle as during her flight to the honey source. The wagging run makes the same angle with the sun on her outward flight did. But the dance is normally performed in the dark inside the hive, on the vertical surface of the honeycomb. Here the angle between the flight path and the sun is translated into the angle between the wagging run and the vertical direction straight upwards.

Another remarkable fact about the bees communication is that if the bee reached her goal (and returned from it) by an L-shaped detour, she uses the angles and lengths of the two sections of flight to calculate the true direction of the goal by straight-line flight, and this is the direction she conveys in her dance, even when she did not this direct route herself.

As for the bees who are following the dance, they are working literally in the dark and can only use touch to find out the angle of the dancer’s wagging run against the vertical. They translate this back into a visual angle with the sun, fly off in this direction for the distance signaled by the wagging run tempo, and look for the flowers of the scent they smelt on the dancer.

So far we have described the language of the Carniolan race of honeybees according to the findings of Frisch. Other races have different ‘dialects’. German, North African, Caucasian, Italian honeybees all indicate distance and direction by much shorter dances than the Carniolans. How the honeybees have learned to communicate with each other is certainly remarkable! However, it is not a true language, because the system used by bees, unlike human languages, cannot generate new combination of structures and symbols to describe novel events. One example of their limitation is that bees appear to have no way of communicating height or depth beyond a few meters. Thus, if you take a bee to a source of food in a place, say 10 metres above ground level, she will return to her hive and try to indicate the food source by means of her dance. Then, the other bees will all fly out in the direction she indicated, but they will never find the source. No matter how near the source is, even if it is just above the hive, the result will be the same.