Afterlife
“And
what of an afterlife? In our humanness, the question stays too small.
Like crabs on the bottom asking each other if there is life after the
ocean.”
Mark Nepo
(except from Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on
Living)
A friend of mine, Mary
Ann, died this week. She was a member of our Spirituality Group. She
waged a year-long battle with cancer, did everything required of her,
was a devout Catholic, an exceptional artist and a delightful human
being. It hurts to know she's gone, and tempting to say she lost the
battle. That would be presumptive on my part. Who knows what her
battle was, and whether she won or lost. What I do know is that she
lived well, loved a lot, was loved by many, and contributed to the
beauty and depth of life. If that can be said of me when I die, I
will be happy.
Always when we lose
someone to death, we are told, “she's in a better place,” or that
Southern favorite, “she's with the Lord now.” Well, what if we
are painting paradise with too thin a brush. What if there is more to
the afterlife than streets of gold and heavenly music. What if there
is unknowable freedom and unconditional love. What if we become part
of something so vast and so beautiful that we cannot, with our human
minds, conceive of it. What if we become part of this gorgeous blue
planet, the earth and the sky. What if we fly on the wind, ripple on
the ocean, gurgle over river rocks. What if we become one with the
cosmos. Would that be enough?
The afterlife, like everything we take on faith, is unknowable. The very best we can do is live
a good life while we're here on terra firma. From what I can tell,
with the sample size I have accumulated during seventy-plus years of
living, people die they way they have lived. If one does one's
spiritual work, clears out the old grievances and bitterness, one
dies in peace. If not, then things are harder. We carry our peace or
our resentments into whatever afterlife comes. The last decade or so
of one's life is designed to be a clearing out process; a letting go
of all the emotional and spiritual baggage one has dragged around
forever. Doing that lightens our load. There's an old hymn that
speaks to this called “Down by the Riverside.” It goes
like this: “I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the
riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside...I ain't
gonna study war no more. I'm gonna lay down my heavy load, down by
the riverside...”
If we can lay down our
heavy load, our swords and shields of resentment and anger, if we can
unburden ourselves of needing retribution for all the wrongs done,
and forgive those who have wronged us, then we enter whatever
afterlife awaits us with the freedom of a feather in the wind. I'm
pretty sure my friend Mary Ann is floating among the sparkles on the
ocean. That sounds pretty good to me.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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