The Urge to Resurrect

Bringing back people from the dead has always been a fantasy of humanity. It seems a particularly relevant topic today, Easter Sunday, as the media frenzy around Terri Schiavo's ordeal in Florida begins to plateau with her impending death.

The sentiment is understandable. No one enjoys letting go of a loved one, or even a liked one. It is a deep-seated human emotion, and the idea that someone can return from the other side is comforting, and baked into many myths, legends, and religions around the world. Many of these stories have to do with the seasons -- eternal cycles and all that -- but others are more pointedly about a specific person returning from the dead.

A top-of-mind scan of resurrection stories includes...

• Hercules rescuing Alcestis from the underworld
• Dante's journey through Hell and back (which, coincidentally, takes place over Easter)
• The magical "awakening" of Hermione in Act V of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale
• Mary Shelley's famously re-animated monster
• Lazarus rising from the dead

I'd consider these "classic" examples, but you can also look to recent pop culture for the same theme:

• Constantine (the movie) involves a resurrected hero
• An entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer revolves around death and resurrection.
• Frosty the Snowman comes "back again some day"
• Kenny dies in every episode of South Park, but miraculously returns in every new episode.

Now I don't want to make too much of this -- you can find pop cultural allusions to pretty much anything you set your mind to. However, the fact remains that death and resurrection remain two of the greater mysteries of existence. People will be pondering this until the end of time.

In my view, the whole resurrection desire is about wanting to turn the clock back and return to the past. In this sense, resurrection is a conservative idea. You want someone back so you can return to the way things were -- not so you can move forward and become something new. Death is transformative; resurrection is restorative.

To sidestep this tug-of-war, many Eastern religions believe in a doctrine of reincarnation. According to the Buddhists, all beings are reborn, but they move forward (or backward) in cycles of existence until they attain Nirvana.

Reincarnation is a nice idea in theory, but it doesn't square well with most American's views of justice and finality. We aren't a culture comfortable with ambiguity. We want winners and losers. A final judgment. You can see this in the repeated court case appeals that have been dragging on for years in the Terry Schiavo case. It is why productive compromise gets called "flip-flopping" and destructive lies are praised as "moral integrity."

I think it is interesting that the Terry Schiavo drama is playing out in Florida. This is the same place that gave us drama over an ambiguous election. The same place that is rebuilding -- resurrecting? -- itself after a deadly season of hurricanes. The same place that is synonymous with an aging population, and that once drew fearless explorers seeking the Fountain of Youth.

Whatever fate befalls Terry Schiavo's fractured family, one can only hope they find a way to resurrect themselves when this is over.