light wrapping

“maybe death

isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light

wrapping itself around us--”

― Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies

____________________________________________

I have thought a lot about death lately

It is hard not to

When death is everywhere

Big deaths, little deaths

Rachel Held Evans, dead at 37

A voice for grace and God,

Gone

Riley Howell

Kendrick Castillo

young men who attacked school shooters

saving classmates,

but dying themselves

Jean Vanier

who in the name of God

helped improve life for people with disabilities

Donna, my dear friend

and for many years my secretary

She of the goofy smile and laugh

Dead

There are other deaths too

The death of empathy

The death of truth

The death of justice

The death of democracy

So many things

Going

Going

Gone

But it is of course the deaths of those we care about

Friends, parents

Siblings, heroes

That hit us hardest.

And we wonder

What happens when people die?

Is there a Heaven?  A Hell?

Do people find their way to whatever is next “in an instant”,

Is there a “big sleep”

while we wait for

The Kingdom

Michael Quoist has prayer he wrote after seeing a funeral. 

“Leaving the cemetery some of the family were sobbing.  All is finished. 

Others were sniffling:  “Come, come, my dear courage: It’s finished!”

Some friends murmured:  “Poor man, that’s how we all finish.”

And others sighed in relief:  Well it is finished.

And I was thinking that everything was just beginning.

Yes, he had finished the last rehearsal, but the play was just beginning.  The years of training were over, but the eternal work was about to start.  He had just been born to life, the real life.  Life that’s going to last, life eternal.

As if there were dead people. 

There are no dead people Lord. 

There are only the living, on earth and beyond.”

What I believe,

and of course I might be wrong

But what I believe is that when we die

We return to that from which we came

Some call it God

Some call it heaven

Jesus suggested that dying was like going home (John 14)

But I like to think come from love

And we return to Love

After all, God is love

We all know the love passage from II Corinthians

But because God love, that passage describes not only love

But God

Revisit the passage and replace the word love with the word God

God is patient

God is kind

God is not easily angered

God keeps no record of wrongs

God always protects

God trusts

God always has hopes for us

God always hangs in there with us

God’s love never fails

The whole point of the Gospel

is that we live in the context of this love

We are connected to this love

embraced by this love

empowered by this love

filled by this love

That is why we can live love

Can be love, here on earth

This is why we can walk through our days

Following the way of the one who in-fleshed love, Jesus

Being generous, kind, compassionate, creative

Accepting, forgiving, giving

And loving

As those in whom the Sacred dwells

We are people who display our divine DNA

And that is why we do not have to fear death. 

For when we die, we return to the One from whom we came,

we return to love

As I often say…

We move from communion with the Sacred

back into complete union with the Sacred

Death does not separate us from the love of God,

it unites us (or re-unites us) with that love

And we are home, once again, no longer the wanderers

“… death isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light

wrapping itself around us--”