Talk about the circle of life is common. Because it's part of the way God has ordered creation, it's naturally part of our understanding. But the circle of life is only one way God orders and arranges creation and the times of our lives.
Nature religions and individuals with no religious or spiritual practice often claim that circular reality, but they leave out a huge part of scripture's witness to God's activity in creation, in history, in our daily walkabouts—resurrection from death.
During his public ministry, Jesus invited everyone to become part of his insider circle. In my baptism, God calls me to live as an outsider to most polite, tamed, predictable structures. God calls us to live as insiders to the way of Jesus.
Life in Jesus' circle is an identity shaped by the contours, demands, and relentless grace of the gospel that seeks justice, freedom, and shalom for all creation. Living in Jesus' circle is life sourced from Word and Sacrament, modeled by the order of creation, the actions and words of the prophets, and especially the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ.
How many times have I quoted Cornel West:
We are people of hope. Why do we party on Friday nights? Why do we go to church on Sundays?
Because it's often the surprise of resurrection from the dead. The feast of fat things for all comers, even late comers. The full day's pay for everyone, even if you signed up at the last hour. The community of shalom sufficiency for friends, enemies, strangers, insiders, outsiders.
The worldview of the bible is open-ended, no longer the endless, predictable recycling of the same thing, yet there is a sense of constancy, of divine design and purpose to the order of nature and creation. Similar to my editing an image in Photoshop, the Holy Spirit edits, styles, filters, re-colors, and reformats people, communities, and institutions. The Spirit of Pentecost brings prophetic promises and broken hopes to life.
It's life-giving, world-changing, society-transforming, creation-renewing death and resurrection stuff!
It's no longer an endless circle of the same thing, so why do you still seek the living among the dead? Right here and right now, we live on the other side of death.
Your post reminds me of Tennyson's "better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay", from Locksley Hall.
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But I am an Eastern man,
and the rice-fields are my place,
the seasons that I understand,
the cycles that softly bring grace
which stands for me immutable
against the pale and misty hills,
boring and yet beautiful
which predictably fulfills
that need for a solid ground
beneath my sandaled feet.
Thus the slow ages go 'round
and then return to greet
a generation's fall and rise
with tired, yes, but grateful eyes.