Life After Life

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afterlife, All Souls Day, Christ, Die before you die, faith, God, Lent, near death experiences, resurrection, self-emptying, surrender, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wisdom

It’s difficult to talk intelligently about something you have never experienced. Sometimes it helps to hear descriptions others give of what has happened to and for them, but there is still a measure of faith needed in those cases in order to believe what they share. This is true especially in stories of “near death experiences” as they give witness to what is perhaps the greatest mystery of life: our death and what lies on the other side of that moment. The Scriptures for this feast of All Souls, when we remember “the faithful departed,” all speak of the hope and the conviction that the souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. (WIS:3:1-9)

I have known this tenet of faith seemingly all my life and have great hopes for an afterlife filled with God but perceptions around that concept have changed over the years and learnings of my life as to what it truly means. As I wrote the title of this morning’s reflection, what arose was a parallel phrase that has become a practice for me over the past several years of Wisdom studies. “Die before you die,” I heard inside myself. Although that sounds rather macabre, what it really means in the everyday is a letting go of what does not serve my growth in order to be ready for the ultimate letting go at the end of my physical life. It’s the follow-on from childhood, one could say, when giving up candy or criticism during Lent helped us to prepare for the day of Christ’s resurrection to new life as indicative of what is in store for us. Now I think of such “giving up/over” as surrender – like the self-emptying of Jesus – in order to be ready for transformation into the lightness of being that is indicated in the Wisdom reading where it says that in the time of their visitation they shall shine and shall dart about as sparks through stubble.

Light is dawning outside my window and it looks like the sun will soon burst forth in the glory of a new day. Just one more metaphor for life after life that sustains me as I prepare for what is ahead in this brief and mysterious gift of life on earth.

The Mind of Christ

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Christ, God is everywhere, joy, kenosis, Paul, Philippians, saint, sanctity, self-emptying, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

As I reflect on the Scriptures here and elsewhere I’ve often come around to the theme of kenosis, (self-emptying), because it seems to me that filling up with God necessitates this action in our lives. I do not speak of beating ego out of ourselves to achieve sainthood. That flies in the face of half of the Great Commandment, the part that tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. But this morning we have the text again in which Paul speaks of the example of Christ who “emptied himself of godliness” in a willingness to come and teach us how to live. (PHIL 2:5-11) He says that we are to have that same mind, that willingness. I read something earlier (while waiting for the internet to come back to me…) that seems to fit how this process of emptying to be filled can work in our lives. I offer it today for our reflection.

Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand. You will travel in darkness in which you will no longer be concerned with yourself and no longer compare yourself to others. Those who have gone by that way have finally found out that sanctity is in everything and that God is all around them. They suddenly wake up and find that the joy of God is everywhere.                              (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation)