Meditation: a poem by Mary Oliver entitled “When Death Comes”
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Reading: by German theologian Hans Küng from Eternal Life? - Life After Death as Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem (p. xiii)
“Do you believe in life after death?” Even theologians are embarrassed when faced with this direct question. It is in fact a question that has tormented humanity from the beginning, in the Old Stone Age, but which seems now to be a little out of fashion. Eternal Life? What is this supposed to mean…?
“Do you believe in life after death?” “No, I’m not religious.” Today this answer does not sound so “modern” as it once did, but somewhat unimaginative, uninformed. It is like the answer to the question about music: “No, I’m not musical.” This is not an argument against music; it is at best an excuse for a further question: a life with or without music, with or without religion; does it really make no difference?
Reading: by neuroscientist and author David Eagleman from Sum - forty tales from the afterlives (p. 5)
In the afterlife you discover that God understands the complexities of life. She had originally submitted to peer pressure when She structured Her universe like all the other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into good and evil. But it didn’t take long for Her to realize that humans could be good in many ways and simultaneously corrupt and mean-spirited in other ways. How was she to arbitrate who goes to Heaven and who to Hell? Might not it be possible, She considered, that a man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes? Might not a woman be an adulteress but bring pleasure and security to two men’s lives? Might not a child unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family? Dividing the population into two categories - good and bad - seemed like a more reasonable task when she was younger, but with experience these decisions became more difficult….
For months She moped around Her living room in Heaven, head drooped like a bulrush, while the lines piled up. Her advisors advised Her to delegate the decision making, but She loved Her humans too much to leave them to the care of anyone else.
In a moment of desperation the thought crossed Her mind to let everyone wait in line indefinitely, letting them work it out on their own. But then a better idea struck Her generous spirit. She could afford it: She would grant everyone, every last human a place in Heaven. After all, everyone had something good inside; it was part of the design specifications… She shut down the operations in Hell, fired the Devil, and brought every last human to be by her side in Heaven…
The most important aspect of Her new system is that everyone is treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined by cots versus waterbeds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot water versus champagne. Everyone is a brother to all, and for the first time an idea has been realized that never came to fruition on Earth: true equality.
The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don’t want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they’re stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote.
So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they’re all in Hell.
The Afterlife and Before
A Sermon Delivered on October 30, 2011
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Five years have passed now since my father died. And it is sometimes still hard to believe he is gone.
It was the summer of 2006. My wife, Elaine, the kids and I had just visited my parents in Germany that summer. It was a good visit. We all tried hard to get along, and indeed the usual tensions that often accompany extended family gatherings seemed more manageable. We ate at our favorite restaurants, and kept our favorite fights to a minimum.
Just ten days after we returned home to Urbana, my father was dead, and I got on a plane back to Frankfurt.
It was hard to believe he was really dead, even when I saw his body lying in the coffin, as if asleep. Even as I spoke at the memorial service, and even as his casket was lowered in the ground, and even as I threw a handful of earth into the grave, it was hard to believe.
And even now, five years later, I find myself strangely surprised, when it occurs to me. Or Elaine sometimes remarks - apropos of nothing in particular - “You know, your father’s dead.” And we both shake our heads in disbelief.
His influence on my life and the life of my family is still distinctly felt. In a way, his presence is palpable. But, of course, he isn’t really here. Or is he?
They say, the veil separating the world of the living and world of the dead is thinnest these days surrounding All Hallows Eve. Some say, the spirits of the dead walk among the living.
I don’t know that this is what my father believed. He didn’t strike me as the kind of person who held out much hope for an afterlife. But I honestly don’t know. This is one of the many things we never talked about.
* * *
“Do you believe in life after death?” This is an awkward question, Hans Küng says, embarrassing even for theologians. Küng was writing for a secular German audience in the early 1980s. Among his readers, he imagined, only the fewest would admit to a belief in the afterlife. For most Germans, life after death is nothing but an ancient superstition, evidence of wishful thinking for the religiously naïve. No self-respecting German intellectual believes in an afterlife.
Americans are different. According to a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, seventy four percent of Americans believe in a life after death. And according to informal surveys done in this church, we are split about evenly, between those of us who believe there is life after death, and those who believe there is nothing.
What happens when we die?
This is a question with which humans have grappled for as long as we have existed. According to anthropologists, every religion on earth has something to say about death. Some say people die but their shadows stick around. Or they die and wait for the Last Judgment. Or they come back in another form.
* * *
In a book entitled A Very Brief History of Eternity, Carlos Eire argues that for the overwhelming majority of human history, we have believed in some sort of eternal life after death, because death itself is such an unfathomable phenomenon. Because we are alive and conscious, because we exist, it is almost impossible to imagine what it would be like if we didn’t exist. “Conceiving of not being and of nothingness is as difficult and as impossible as looking at our own faces without a mirror,” he writes.
A century ago, the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote, “Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness.”
The finality of death is unimaginable, because life is so thoroughly invested in continuing to live. As Eire puts it,
“All life on earth is programmed to survive, and thrive, and reproduce. Occasionally, nature goes berserk and living beings kill themselves, be they lemmings, beached whales, or anguished artists, such as Vincent van Gogh… But the vast majority of living organisms go on living and struggling to thrive, even as others die by the thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions.” (p. 11)
“Death always intrudes rudely, uninvited;” Eire writes, “very few living beings ever consciously seek it out, even when they refuse to wear seatbelts and smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. Scientists affirm this concept, emphatically and without question…” (p. 12)
* * *
Is there life after death? Well, of course there is. Life will continue, as it has for millions of years. The elements of body and soul will be transformed. We will return to the earth - ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The physical building blocks of who we are - biologically, chemically - will return to the natural world, just as the leaves of the trees in autumn fall to the ground and turn to earth, becoming soil and nourishing new life.
The law of conservation of energy in physics tells us energy in an isolated system cannot be destroyed. It can change its location. It can be transformed - chemical energy can become kinetic - but neither can be created or destroyed. Energy has an equivalent mass, and mass has an equivalent energy, and that’s that, said Einstein.
As Rick Warren - the author of the bestseller The Purpose Driven Life - sees it, “We were made to last forever, and this life is like a warm-up act, a dress rehearsal, for the real show in eternity. Once we fully grasp this, it makes all the difference in the world, affecting our choices, values, relationships, goals, and how we use our time and resources. We reorder our priorities and start emphasizing the enduring, important things over temporary things that ultimately won’t matter.” (Life After Death - The Evidence, by Dinesh D’Souza, p. x)
This notion of eternal life, which highlights the most essential values of our lives, and the enduring consequences of our actions, is not unique to Christianity.
Diana Eck writes that both Hinduism and Christianity affirm that death is not decisive. “Both presuppose a life, a Godward life-energy which, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, “does not die when the body dies.” Both address the mystery of that ongoing, irrepressible life that cannot be done in by death. Both convey the notion that our actions will have consequences far beyond our understanding, and even beyond death.”
The Hindu view, she writes,
“takes seriously our sense of the “immortality of the soul,” … and our sense that what we call “life” is usually too short a time in which to grow up. It gives us a sense that we do indeed reap what we sow, though it may not be evident in this life. The soul bears the imprint of the deeds, attachments, and emotions that drive this complex being we call “me.” Genius like that of Mozart is accounted for. The death of a child, the mental illness of a loved one, is somehow more explicable in the larger context of this long drama we cannot fully see or understand. It is a plausible and attractive worldview for those of us who would like a little justice done, whether we ourselves can see it or not.” (Encountering God, p. 114)
But life after death does not necessarily involve an immortal soul. Buddhism, for instance, shares Hinduism’s notion of reincarnation, and the on-going cycle of rebirth. But the Buddhist doesn’t believe in an eternal essence called the Soul.
Yes, something is passed on and transformed after death, but it is very elusive. Trying to describe it, the Buddha spoke of the flame that is passed from one candle to the next, to the next, to the next. It would be difficult to imagine the flame on the final candle to be the same as the flame on the first - and yet there is a causal connection. Some influence was transmitted, even without lasting substance.
* * *
Some of us may embrace the idea of an afterlife. Others may dismiss it as a kind of escapism. Some of us say that in hoping for another life after death, we invariably give insufficient attention to life before death, the life we have right now. Hoping for a heavenly reward encourages us to tolerate the intolerable, to refrain from challenging the injustices of this life, because our suffering will be compensated in the next life. In the next life our tormentors will get their due, and we will be redeemed.
But, of course, there are many ways to imagine the afterlife. Each image gives a different spin on the meaning of life itself.
David Eagleman offers 40 whimsical stories of the afterlife. With no ambition to provide foolproof evidence, nor attempting to win us over to a particular view, he indulges in a series of thought-experiments:
What if in the afterlife, you can choose to be reborn as whatever creature you want. You choose to be a horse. But as the transformation is taking place, you realize too late that as you become a horse you lose your human consciousness - you are simply a horse - and for a split second wonder what sort of magnificent extra-terrestrial creature, might have wished for a simpler life after death, and chose to become human.
What if after death, you live in a world inhabited only by people you met in the course of your life. A small selection of humanity with whom you are stuck for eternity. So you are left longing to meet others - the millions from cultures and classes you ignored all your life.
What if in the afterlife, we meet the creators of the universe, and realize that they are a species of dim-witted creatures, who designed humans to be their superiors. We are supposed to help them answer their questions of life’s meaning and purpose.
What if in the afterlife, you realize that you yourself are a godlike creature - of enormous size, power, and knowledge - and your time on earth was merely a brief vacation from your divine duties and worries.
* * *
Every story and every theory about the afterlife - whether denying it our affirming it, whether describing it in simple terms or in elaborate detail - every single one is designed to help us live this life more fully.
Each one tries to broaden our understanding of who we truly are, and what life we are called to live. Each one tries to turn our attention to what really matters.
Which is the better attitude: to live as if you would live forever? Would you be a better steward of the earth? Would you be more compassionate, more generous, and more just - if you knew you would need to face the consequences of your actions for eternity?
Or is it better to believe that this, right now, is your one single, precious life? Every day a unique opportunity to make difference. This day could be your last. So you are compelled to put aside all things cheap and trivial, and devote yourself to the most essential concerns of your life - to the people you deeply love, and ideals that are worth dying for.
* * *
I don’t know what my father believed about life after death. But I do know that his life continues within my own. I know he hoped his failures would serve as cautionary tales for me, and that his accomplishments would be both inspiration for me to do likewise, and challenge to do better.
And so, looking at my own life, I know that, in ways he could not imagine, his hopes have been fulfilled.
* * *
Death is the ultimate mystery. What lies beyond is the ultimate unknown.
May the questions that arise in our minds,
expand our sense wonder,
and deepen our commitment
to serve the greatest good we can imagine
- to make the world better.
And may we live our every day to the fullest.
Amen.
