Another Farewell

Someday we will stop being so surprised by suicides, but today is not that day. Some of the people that I thought were just great have done it: Curt Cobain, Robin Williams, Chris Cornell and now Anthony Bourdain. In the case of Cobain, it wasn't too mysterious, he had chronic pain and was battling drug addiction, he was also in that awkward phase of adjusting to fame and success.  Williams rocked us because he was so talented and seemed funny and happy, and we just couldn't imagine that he was really a crying on the inside clown.  Cornell seemed like he had survived the musician's curse, he had been through the addiction and rehab cycle a couple of times, he had been a part of several really successful bands and been both critically acclaimed and widely loved by fans.  His lyrics were emotionally deep and his musical talent far outstripped even the most successful of his contemporaries.  He seemed like, at 50, he was moving into that phase of artistry that gave elder artists like Cohen, Dylan and Bowie a bit of a chance to really do something beautiful even if it wasn't a commercial success.

Now to Anthony Bourdain, a man famous for cooking and travelling and writing about cooking and travelling.  A man who seemed to have a life that anyone with the smallest craving for adventure would call amazing. The thing that I guess really gets me about Bourdain going out like this is that, even more than the artists that I related to through their songs and their acting, I felt like I knew Anthony Bourdain.  His show, No Reservations, was something I could watch endlessly, much to Michele's chagrin.  He took me places I will probably never go in real life, and even if I did, I would probably not be willing or able to go the places his production team took him.  He taught me to look for street food and embrace the local. He taught me to despise fast food and chain restaurants and to eat there only if you have to.

As his show progressed though, he also started to teach his audience how to be good guests, which is the other half of a spiritual practice that I know is of deep importance: hospitality.  If you watch how Anthony Bourdain accepted the hospitality of people around the world, you will see that despite his gruff, New York crankiness, he knew that being welcome into people's homes and at their table was a sacred occurrence. He knew that the way grandma, anyone's grandma, created food from the depths of their tradition was something that no restaurant on earth could ever produce.  And the thing that you appreciated is that he let you know exactly how he felt about the experiences, he let you see what was going on in his soul, and a man pretty obviously not given to vulnerability would show you his spirit.

But I guess there was something missing.  A man who spent his life seeking out connections with the most sacred and intimate rituals of humanity, table fellowship, could not in the end stay with us and show us more.  Even when he was at a point where he could go and do whatever he wanted, he just could not stay here any longer.  Maybe the keen sensitivity to our shared humanity that was his gift was also an open wound, maybe it was that at 61, with so much at his command, he still couldn't shake the sadness that always lurks in the part of us that creates beautiful things.

I think maybe that's something that all of these people shared in common.  I don't want to glorify suicide as some grand artistic gesture, I think Goethe and Salinger really put that idea to bed for us a while ago. But what I would call us to consider is that maybe if we let ourselves be open to the humanity that we all share we are putting ourselves in a position where suffering is inevitable. And in fact, suffering should not be avoided if it happens in the course of being more open to others and of loving those others. That is certainly what Christianity calls us into, if we're really following Jesus.  Those relationships that become sacrificial, that gravitational pull to identify with the last and the least.  Anthony Bourdain spent quite a bit of time among the poor of the world, and indeed among the rich and middle class as well, he ate their food and drank from their cup. What he gave all of us was the chance to see how connected we all could be if we would just stop fearing one another and start eating together.  It was good work, but I'm sure it was hard, and maybe even grievous.

Even though I know he was not a "religious" person in the regular sense of the word, he was a religious person in his willingness to be with people. This morning I am sure that Anthony Bourdain has experienced the mercy of a God he didn't really believe in, but who gave him the desire to sit at all those tables, with all of those other children of God.  If he could do it here, he will do it there.