All the while I’ve been mourning. Mourning for the old life being let go of. Scared of life after death but compelled to be reborn. Breath tightening. Anger rising. Words cutting. Fighting tooth and nail to hold on while the inevitable takes me.
And who is it who will speak in the new world? Me or not me. I or no I? Perhaps I will dissolve into nothingness and disappear. Perhaps the nothingness is everything now.
Vibrancy is calling me through the leaves on the ancient olive trees rustling, the sounds of remembrance in the air. Illuminated wisdom ready to free us.
Don’t be scared she says. But I am. Oh, yes I surely am.
Thousands of years of calling heard in the snap of a branch slaps me hard into a place that I reluctantly long for; That place of myself in these worlds that I am terrified of.
You know it too don’t you old soul. Didn’t they come for us before for something similar? Didn’t we go underground. Didn’t we go silent and hide? I know that you hear that sound too and are giving it up for me. And you are right, you can’t sell the memories. You can’t price knowing. It continues in the deep rumble of life’s temporal heartbeat, thumping the drum of no time at all. Two thousand years of now flowing in the breeze of all our futures. And thanks be to God, that sitting in this church, under the vaunted ceiling of carved sea creatures, I hear the calling and am listening intently now.
So tell me now, which I am I now? Am I a decision maker, a follower or a leader? Am I a good servant? Perhaps I am tired because I fought for it too hard or resisted it too strongly. Is there something to mourn at all or should we rejoice and celebrate as the walls tumble down. Tell me, does the afterdeath life feel like this one or will the exhale be enough to shake it all off and start anew?
Trust. Trust. Trust. Here it comes. All it took is two thousand years and one almost imperceptible moment. My prayer is to know it and surrender to it and trust that you have me and my loves held gently in your wise and safe hands while we birth.
Your family is in the light he said before he died and his hill is there to remind me now. I will sit with him close in this new world of mine. I shall listen intently. And trust him to know.
