We brought nothing into the world,
and we can take nothing out of it.
—1 Timothy 6:7
In Act III of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the Stage Manager takes us through Grover’s Corners cemetery, speaking as we stroll:
“There are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings . . . There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.
“Gradually, [people] lose hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the pleasures they had . . . and the things they suffered.
“All those terribly important things kind of grow pale around here.”
The cemetery has a powerful message.