When the seasonal interns get together you never know what you’re going to get

Today in our seasonal intern study session, we turned a discussion of a reading about community called An Invitation to Beloved Community by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Shane Claiborne into an in-depth conversation about death, grief, and eternal life. I find this topic to be fascinating, the way that people view it and approach it is so different and so individually powerful. I’ve always been kind of put off by the idea of eternal life in heaven, it doesn’t seem like a reward to me nor does it seem entirely relevant to my life. I’ve seen it used far too often as a scare tactic to convince others to be “Christian”. I’ve also seen an unhealthy focus on life after death and little to no focus on the life we are living right now. This conversation we had was beautiful and life-giving; and no I don’t think it’s ironic that a conversation about death can be life-giving. Having this conversation was a nice reminder of how small our lives are and how big our lives are, all at the same time. We all had different thoughts and approaches to death, but an underlying theme was one of reverence. Hannah, our German intern, said it beautifully when talking about the deaths of her two grandfathers. She told the story of her grandfather who died in his house, they left him where he was for a few days and friends came to visit, they had meals downstairs while he was upstairs, they took time to mourn, they took time to be. Her second grandfather died in a nursing home and in a hour they had him taken away and were working on all the business arrangements that day. She just said, simply: “death needs time”.

Now, I realize, this might seem like a horribly morbid post to some of you. Thinking about death is taboo in our culture, and that is entirely the problem. We have to acknowledge it, we have to respect it, we are here because of it. I wrote about this topic about a year ago so I went to look it up after our discussion today and I want to share it with you all:

The idea of eternal life scares the shit out of me, it always has. I can remember as a child lying in my bed at night trying to grasp what it would be like to be conscious for forever, to continue on with no end. I almost moved myself to tears out of horror every time. I would have to quickly think of something else entirely, puppies or ballerinas, whatever worked I would jump all over and form intricate stories until I could sleep. It is still something that I cannot even begin to fathom, and even today if I get on that same train of thought I would get caught up in as a child, I will most likely experience a small version of an anxiety attack. But one thing that does calm me is when I think about the beauty and interconnectivity of our world. We are all made of the stuff of stars, we hold pieces of rocks, of dinosaurs, of koi fish, of Gandhi and of Jane Doe in our chests. Nothing on this earth is entirely new, it is just old things formed into a something new. Perhaps this is how we have eternal life, in our death new life is formed and we will always have an impact on whatever creature we are lucky enough to be a part of. We are, and always will be, a part of this earth whether we like it or not. We were created to be here and to participate, so we better start doing our part. We better start breathing life into our borrowed bodies and leave behind an energy that we would be proud sharing with our children and their world, because we will be sharing it. If I die and go on to be a tomato plant it will be the most beautiful thing I can imagine becoming. There is a perfection inherent in the simple ways of nature, that is not simple at all but is, in fact, incredibly profound. A tomato is so taken for granted, but a tomato is fully itself and is fully giving, what human can say that of themselves? We have a lot to learn from the bugs that we instinctively want to kill; who knows, you could be part spider. The beauty we see in the stars and the power we feel when we take time to observe them is within each and every one of us, we just have to recognize it. Our cells are stardust and our skin is dirt, this is a beauty that keeps me going on the days where it feels like I have no purpose. I am so simple yet so profound that I owe it to myself, to the world, and to God to act in the extraordinary way in which I was created. I was created, I create with my life, and will continue to create in death when the earth takes me back in. If this is the meaning of eternal life, then I can rest easy that the earth will use me as she needs and will continue to do so forever.When i finally do lay down for eternal rest, I can ease myself to sleep knowing that I will be taken back in and reunited fully with the divine soil from which I was created.