The Silver Cord Of Life

“Remember him before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well.” This passage always sticks in my mind, conjuring an image of a silver cord snaking through the darkness of the universe, the connection that creates life, the mysterious bonding at some still-unknown level that, in a way we do not understand, transforms an inanimate object into a living being.

Life is life. I think whatever it is that animates things, whatever causes them to be alive, is the same power running through all living beings. Some people say it is energy, frequencies and vibrations. I think it is far more than that. In the Bible, when Moses asks God His name, God answers, “I am that I am.” Maybe that says something about this aliveness: that it lies at the core of all beings, and that it is the very being of God Himself.

If that is the case, it is important to treat all living things with care. The being that created life lives in me, and it lives in the smallest bug and the largest animal. Human beings can create many things, but we cannot create life. It is holy, and it makes all that lives holy as well, even the seemingly most insignificant beings.

Life is a miracle. It is a mystery. If we cannot create life, we should not take it, not even the smallest flicker, unless it is necessary to preserve our own. The fragile cord that Solomon calls the silver cord sustains all of life. It is not of our world, but in our world are things that seem to represent it. I find these things fascinating.

I watch for Solomon’s cord everywhere: in the silver pulse of ancient starlight, in the silvery clouds that stretch overhead, dropping threads of sparkling life onto dry, broken ground.

Rain and starlight, water and energy, are among the mysteries that connect us to life itself. They are painted on the inner ceiling of the theater of existence, guiding us toward a revelation of this mysterious power, this glimmering, shimmering connection that reveals life as something precious, ethereal, thin, and quivering and glimmering with power and meaning, stark against the blankness of nothingness.