Birth and Death: The Threshold

The Soul's Journey

“...Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come,

From God, who is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy...”

William Wordsworth (Intimations of Immortality, Stanza 5)

Anyone who's held a newborn baby knows we come here “trailing clouds of glory.” In their being is complete vulnerability, they are without guile, and they have no fear. They look into our own eyes with unfathomable wisdom. Clearly, they know what we have forgotten about God and what lies beyond the veil.

At Pilgrim, four of our elders have died in the last year or so, along with two others who were part of our greater community. And now, another is on the threshold. Each of them had completed a long-life journey, had gleaned from their living all that could be gleaned, but they have left a big hole in our small church family. In their last days, they took on the same guileless, vulnerable, fearless expression as when they came into this world. I remember seeing it in my own father's eyes just before his death. He reassured me, “Whatever happens, it's going to be all right.”

It is a comfort to know that we are born into this world with innocence and promise, and we leave it the very same way, regardless of what has happened in between. The purpose of this lifetime is to learn as much as we can, to grow our souls through many experiences, and to take all of it home to the same God from which we came, “trailing clouds of glory” in our wake.

                                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                                      Jane