Today is my step-daughter’s birthday and it leads me to think about birthdays in general. Our birthday is something that is special and personal to us throughout our lives. It recognises the arrival to our parents of the answer to a dream.
The arrival of a baby and in most cases the safe recovery from her labours of our mother. Birth is something that is usually anticipated eagerly and impatiently for nine months. Nine months during which plans are made. Plans about names – should we call him/her after someone in the family? Should the child carry the same name as his or her father or mother? What about calling the baby after some famous person, or the doctor who attended the delivery? Then there is planning the bedroom and buying the furniture and furnishings, the baby clothes; the toys! These days of course most couples opt to learn the sex of their baby well before birth but in my day we had no idea and had to think of names for either sex and to play safe, the first baby clothes would be white.
What about us? We may be helpless little infants but we have arrived on this earth from elsewhere. As William Wordsworth puts it:-
“Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God which is our home.”
Where have we come from? Or do you believe we didn’t exist before the egg and the sperm came together in the womb? In my view, we came from a part of the spiritual world and we deliberately chose to be born to our parents, not to any old parents but to the very ones we have. The American poet Robert Frost said we chose “… for some good discerned.” What good many of us never discover in this life but I am in no doubt that choose we did.
If we came from somewhere else and we chose to come, what are we? We are spiritual beings – spirit is our natural environment. On earth we are as aliens, even though our physical bodies are perfectly adapted for life on earth, our spirit is not. In our early years we are still vividly aware of our former home and our loved ones there who tended and loved us. As we grow up, so those memories are blotted out by the growing influence of our five physical senses. That does not mean however, that we are any less spirit people than we were when we were born. Deep inside, we know that, but our conscious mind usually refuses to acknowledge it.
Our birthday therefore is a celebration of the day we finally made our transition from our old spiritual home to our new homes on Earth. We would have made our choice to come, perhaps long before the event and had been waiting until conditions were exactly right for the transition. Transition – that is a word one associates more with death than birth. Is there a difference? None! just similarities. We are moving from one state of existence to another, we are leaving behind many who love us dearly and most of us do not consciously know what awaits us. We have to face both transitions alone, although there are many there from spirit to help us on both occasions but they cannot interfere, they can just bring peace, contentment and acceptance. The struggle to free ourselves from our mother’s womb demands a great deal of effort on our part and it takes time and we most do the work ourselves. The same is true on death (again in most cases). Letting go of this physical frame is not always easy, even for the relative few who know life continues in the spiritual world.
Just as our birth here on earth is an occasion for celebration, so our rebirth into spirit on death is a cause for celebration there; although it is a cause of sadness and mourning here. Birth is an adventure, as are life and death and this is due to the eternal spirit which is the real you and the real me. We are therefore right and fully justified in setting aside the day of our birth for annual celebrations. Our “Happy Birthday’s” echo down the years and are heard in the spiritual world, where many remember well our being launched on our adventure into physical life and their sense of loss when we left.
If you share today with my step-daughter – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
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