About the afterlife...

The aging and thoughtful: What do you think about death?
The young and spirited: Well, I don't think about it. (She's so young and spirited, she only thinks about life.) But I think I believe only the body dies.
The aging and thoughtful: Do you believe in a living soul?
The young and spirited: Oh Yes. I believe the most important part of a person is the soul. And my soul is very alive. The spirit doesn't die, the body does.
The aging and thoughtful: What is a soul?
The young and spirited: A person's thoughts and feelings, the way we view the world.
The aging and thoughtful: A personality?
The young and spirited: Yeah, kind of.

The aging and thoughtful believes in the river of life. He believes in hungry seals eating the fish out of our nets, homeless people sleeping in the park, little girls doing cartwheels in the grass; we all flow together. The river of life passes before you. Before you are born others have lived and live without you. The river of life passes through you. As you are alive others live with you. The river of life passes after you. After you die others live and will live without you.

The aging and thoughtful: You're still in the middle of the river of life.
The young and spirited: Yes, I'm almost young and I'm almost old.
The aging and thoughtful: Who do you pray to?
The young and spirited: I pray to spirits.

They're like angels, though she couldn't explain what kind. Sometimes she thinks the big fluffy orange cat eating fluffy white snow outside her window is the angel she's meant to see just because it makes her happy to see it. Then she wonders if she really believes in prayer, or if she just believes in reaching deep within herself and reaching out into warmth and silence to find the truth. Yes, she prays to spirits. She has no trouble believing in spirits because every human being has one. Who's to say there's not bigger, better spirits out there? She wishes she could attribute the same rationale to believing in God because it seems everyone has their own God, too. If she can believe in spirits because everyone has their own spirit, then why can't she believe in God because everyone has their own God? But that actually has the opposite effect; she finds it hard to believe in God because everyone has their own God. I guess she has to stash her last few prayers way in the back of her psyche so she can pull them out when she really needs them.

But she only defines for herself what her spirit is and what she should do it. She doesn't believe in religion. She won't let anyone control her spirit. She believes school is conformity of the mind telling you what you must think about and where it's most appropriate to think about it. . Controlling the mind. Work is conformity of the body telling you where it must be and what it must do. Controlling the body. But church is conformity of the soul. And it, and it's mother religion, control the essence of the human being. Who she really is and that's much worse.

The young and spirited: If you go listening to everybody you're only going to be confused. The only way you're going to find peace with your spirit is to give it independence.

The aging and thoughtful believes in angels, both angels of life and angels of death. It meant an awful lot to the young and spirited that her being there and helping out meant so much to him. But She doesn't want to tell him the truth: she's definitely not an angel with her head haloed in a ball of light. She's a kid insecure about how much love to give to the world and she likes to listen to old people, to respect their search for what he calls God's grace. He says you fear nothing if you have God. She was not an angel sent to him from God; but they were definitely to be a part of each other's lives. Divine intervention? Maybe. He took comfort in believing so, so she let herself be his angel. Psychological destiny? Definitely.

The aging and thoughtful believes in the young and spirited. She washes his feet and changes his sheets. He says to her, "This person from heaven dropped by. One night you'll look at me and light will be around your head." But he insists that the angels he believes in are not TV angels. "Did you ever see that show "Touched by an Angel"? It's not realistic; angels show up all the time,  everywhere. - At the hope of the beginning, at the peace of the end, and all of that erratic stuff in between. - And when the person is going to die, the angel of death shows up. But he doesn't look like an angel of death."

She meant to ask him what an angel of death looks like. She figures he means one of those Dickens angels or black shadows that drag you sobbing and hysterical to your own grave site, the ones that scare the devil out of you.

The thoughtful and aging tries remembering all of the angels his catholic upbringing taught him about. Let's see. First there was Michael. Then there was Gabriel. What was the third? He swore there was a third but he just couldn't remember it. So he asked the young and spirited. She couldn't respond: the third angel was looking right at her. He talked about how he believed people started over in Israel and how the Garden of Eden is buried somewhere over in the Middle East. And "Christ was once Michael," he said. And the young and spirited got lost somewhere after that.

The aging and thoughtful: Do you believe in Christ?
The young and spirited: I do, sort of. But I have my doubts. I believe you must look deep within yourself to find your own faith. Your own spirit.
The aging and thoughtful: Do you pray to Christ?
The young and spirited: Urr.. (Long silence - she wasn’t sure what her spirits' names were.)
The aging and thoughtful: Pray for me. And don't forget to say "Please God, grant this through Christ your son, our Lord.

The young and spirited never thought about this much before because she's very alive. He's an old man and he's a sick man. And he knows he's not going to live forever. So he must think about this stuff all of the time. She mainly concerns herself with concerns of the living: work, school, and relationships; eating, sleeping and trying to have a bit of fun. She rarely sees the dulling of the colours or the hardness of the soul the way he sees them. She sees it in the shadow of life; he sees it in the twilight of death. She doesn't think about death as much as he feels she should because she's so young. And their bible study friend sure thinks about death a lot, too. Well, he thinks about life; but it's the life that comes after death: the afterlife. She's a big kid in her little world and they are a shut in and a bible scholar. She's young; they're old. So their thoughts and feelings are a little different. Reason feels mean for thinking, "Do they just believe in God because they're old?" And then feelings reason, "I feel no less of them simply because they're different." Maybe she has more in common with them than she thinks. She's as old on the inside as they are on the outside. How can she help but have an old spirit? Look what her feelings and reasons have put her through.

According to the tarot card reader she met at that house party a couple of years ago, she has a very old spirit. And he had been reading tarot cards for years. She wonders about old spirits, and new spirits. Corn, blueberries, and autumn harvest pumpkins have new spirits; perhaps, the warming seas that kill the coral on the reef has an old one. The big blue-grey soul that keeps the ocean lives forever; but corn in it's season and ripeness only lives for days to allow its harvester to live for years. 

The thoughtful and aging: Don't forget to pray for me.

Every Wednesday Bill from the Senior's Resource Centre visited. Our friendly know-it-all bible scholar friend has an answer for everything. He travels all over the world consulting other bible scholars to find his truth, to help him define his spirit. But that's just another way. The young and spirited is the opposite. She's very spiritually independent. She finds the truth within herself. She defines her own spirit. Having said that though, the bible scholar friend is still somewhat more spiritually liberated than some of the religious traditionalists around. "These traditions were created by man and not by God," he says. He also says that there really is no hellfire, that hell is just a translation of the words sheol and Hades from Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts. And neither of these words mean fire; they mean the invisible world of departed souls, the netherworld kingdom, the abode of the shades of the dead. More concisely, they mean the grave or a pit. Which makes sense for I'm told that around the time of Christ there was a big pit they threw things in - sometimes things like dead bodies - The dead bodies of the prosecuted. They threw dead bodies into a burning pit. So there really is no hell. It's a metaphor based on ancient practice. There is no hell; there is a state of unconsciousness and death where there is nothing. Bible texts are old. Linguistic roots of words used in the bible suggest that these words meant something very different when the bible was first written. We're putting new meanings on old words which grossly distorts the interpretation of the bible.

But what happens to the know-it-all bible scholar's answer for everything when people start asking questions that at first seem impossible to answer. If God is love then why does he make people suffer? Why does he allow murder, abuse and exploitation? It's obvious he'd been asked this question before. With no time to think he replied, "Life on earth is just a training ground." Sounds good, but it also sounds cliché. "Every man, woman, and child is a free moral agent." God allows each of us to make our own decisions without interference. He also mentions the sin of Adam and Eve: "If people did what they were told there would be no sickness and no problems." I don’t know man. Most of the times I did what I was told it caused nothing but sickness and problems. So it's all Adam and Eve's fault, then. I suppose this all should just be taken to mean that all the hardships we go through are intended to teach. Childhood sickness, pain, natural disasters, accidents - all to train us for the better life to come. I kind of agree. That’s a positive attitude if nothing else. And there's nothing wrong with a positive attitude. No doubt if you have a little bit of it you'll live healthier and happier. But what about malicious hate? Why would a God of love allow the hatred of man to be his teacher? Hate is not a very good role model. I'd much rather be taught by and look up to someone worth being taught by and looking up to. I believe there is a lot to learn from life but I don't put it in the context of god; I put it in the context of fate or prescribed destiny. That makes more sense to me. Fate professes no love or hate just a natural neutrality that is inevitable with the passing of time and all those things that happen within it. I don't believe a strong spirit of love would try to teach others through hate. I should like to think I have a little bit of music in my soul and I wouldn't want to teach others with noise.

Our bible scholar friend talks about the man who was saved all of his life and the man who was bad all of his life and says the holy one will be the glorified one. But this frustrates the aged and thoughtful. "There's going to be more singing and celebration over the man who was converted," he says. It's a far bigger deal to win a soul that was almost lost than to always have a soul. The young and spirited can see this point but she can also see how special it is for a spirit to always try to be pure. She also knows the troubled past of the now very wonderful man to whom we owe the adverse perspective. As a teenager he smashed out windows for fun, broke into commercial garages, picked fights all of the time and eventually wound up in reform school on Bell Island. He's not like that anymore. You would never find a purer soul. Not even many of the souls that were pure their whole lives could come close to the pureness of his soul now. He lives to laugh and loves to live. He is a seer of pale blue frosty hills unfolding into green fields enshroud by red trees. Despite all of the dirty socks littering the floor that he can't bend over to pick up, he still sees the beauty of just being alive. Those dull colours that enshroud the black spirit of his bandaged and disfigured feet could never contain him. His love of the blue and the green and the red could walk willingly to the end of the world where death lingers and time sleeps. The hope of finding there a life of eternal rainbows drives him on. Despite his disability and poverty, he appreciates his life and lives it like a gift. And he gives everything that he has.

The bible scholar claims there will be two afterlives - a spiritual kingdom and a kingdom on earth. The king will decide if we are more suited for the spiritual being or the immortal vital earthly being. In heaven on earth, God is giving us wood to build houses. But this confuses the aged and thoughtful even more. "All God has to do is point and a house would appear," he says. It just doesn't make sense. The bible scholar calls every person a free moral agent. We can do things ourselves independent of God. He just provides the resources to do it. But even if he supplies the resources, are we really independent? In the temple, the man with the money believed he was so good that he thanked God for it. He said, "I'm glad I'm not like those people." Those people were the poor. The old woman who gave just a few coppers, but gave all she had, fell down crying. And the scriptures praised her. But according to the bible scholar, in the next life, God promises to reward those who believe in him with the opulent life that he deems so self-centred and sinful during this life. Again, it just doesn't make sense.

The young and spirited is reluctant to make any interpretation of the spirit world; she's never been there. There is no truth in interpreting places you've never been, only assumption. But the brimstone and fire preachers scare the brimstone and fire out of everybody. And when the aged and thoughtful says that sometimes they go a little bit overboard, the young and spirited just takes it as a polite understatement because that's what it is.

How is anyone to know what to think of God and their places in his kingdom when they have all of these people speaking for him? When they have all of these TV's and radios speaking for their souls?  TV evangelists have all of this electronic equipment such as the buds they put in their ears. Several people disperse throughout the crowd. They get the members of the audience to fill out prayer cards that require their names, addresses, ages, or whatever. Then they gather all of this information together and pass it backstage to where the righteous cons are. Well, random individuals are called on by our souls' TV tutor fiend, (oops I mean friend. Sheesh, sometimes typos are more effective than the original text itself.) The audience members are just stunned by the evangelist's incredible gift: he reads people's minds and knows everything about them without even knowing them. How can they be singled out in a crowd and identified on a confidential level? Is this a divine talent? No, it's all written down right in front of them. And it's all relayed from their prayer card-holders in the back to the big mouthing soul-cheater in the front. The electronic miracle of the bullshit wire transmits the miracle bullshit from backstage to the almighty evangelist. Of course the audience would think he's divine when he picks out random members and supposedly recites all of this personal information about them from nothing but fabricated divinity. Soulful intuition knows better.

The young and spirited insists they're not really healing anybody. It's a psychological thing. They think they're being healed therefore they find psychological healing in this illusion. But then they walk away and find they're every bit as sick, but take comfort in their psychologically rooted faith that eventually their illusion will come true. The aged and thoughtful spoke of a young girl who was really sick and crippled. But they wouldn't let the young one onstage because they knew they couldn't heal her. They can't induce the illusion of faith for two abandoned legs that won't work because they can't make them work and they know it. They can make a man with high blood pressure believe for a moment that his ailment has disappeared; but they can't make a child that doesn't have legs believe that she does. Through insidious psychological betrayal they can make a fool that has no soul believe he has a soul; but they can't make a genius that has no head believe he has a head. They really exploit their God by doing this. Yet these people are revered like saints.

Our bible scholar friend tells us that only the saints will go straight from Earth to heaven to be with Jesus and God. Everyone else will have to be judged including those who exploit and betray him. But does that mean saints aren't sinless? Nobody has kept all of the commandments. According to our bible scholar friend there are only two sinless people, Jesus and Adam, and we all know what happened to Adam. So there really are no other saints. Not even Mother Theresa. Everyone has broken commandments and saints don't break commandments. Hmmm… spiritual liberation. Maybe they do then. Perhaps people really can make mistakes and still be good at heart and pure in soul. Our visions, our minds, our memories, thoughts and feelings; that's a soul, that's what will transcend the grave not our physical bodies. Our bible student friend insists you can decide if you want your spirit to go with God or if you want to have an immortal body of sorts and remain on earth. But over the countless years the earth has been here, billions of people have lived. So also, billions of people have died since the beginning of time. They say earth is overpopulated now. If there's going to be a heaven on earth, then where are they going to put everybody? Where are they all going to go? Texas. Not a place to put heaven on earth, but our bible student friend insists that it is.

The Aging and thoughtful says, "Texas will hold all of them! Sure, they're all bigots up there. And racists. They go out and shoot a black man and then go to church and pray."

People behaving like animals.

Says the young and spirited, not wholly agreeing with him yet still trying to be polite and understand his point of view: Sure poor old animals wouldn't behave like that. Though some animals will make away with anyone or anything that gets in it's way.

The aging and thoughtful: An animal called King Henry used to cut the head off his wives. They got in his way and he made away with them. See, there was no divorce back then. And in order to get rid of his wives he had to make away with them. Like animals they have no sense of reason or feeling.

The young and spirited: Of all the animals that inhabit this world I often find human animals the least feeling and the least reasoning.

The aging and thoughtful: All of this talk of animals, especially the human ones, makes me wonder why we're even here. Is it all just to doubt, to fail; to compare primitive instinct to common sense, people to pigs; to sacrifice reason to anger and feeling to this cold world. This cold world would be a lot better off if Noah missed the boat.

The young and spirited still kind of but not really agreed: "Yes some people fail to balance reason and feeling and behave more like some animals who lack these skills to the capacity that people are supposed to possess them. And yes, well, the United States has a negative history with the slaves and the Ku Klux Klan." But she has good friends from The States who don't condone slavery and the mistreatment of anyone who is different. Not wanting to turn a strictly spiritual issue as the transcendence of the soul into a political one, she changes the subject back: "… since the beginning of time … where are they all going to go?"

When all graves open up and time stands still, the bible student claims people will walk out of the ground and look as they did when they were in their prime, in their twenties and thirties. But the spirit really doesn't have a physical appearance. It shows through actions, behaviour, and words - the way others react to them. I don't believe the body comes back because once the body dies, that's it. But, again, the spirit doesn't die; the body does. The aging and thoughtful is afraid that he'll die and it's going to be all over; but he has or wants faith that he'll get his young healthy body back. He has pictures of himself as a young season in time all over the house: One as a broad armed muscle-bound twenty-four-year old standing in front of his red Pontiac with a white lid; another of him and his rowing team preparing for the regatta.

The aging and thoughtful: Pray that you and I might get lots of nerve and will be outspoken. (Then he changes his mind.) The quiet person has more appeal.
The young and spirited: We wouldn't be the same people anymore.

She knows the real reason he wants her to pray for him. He wants to row again; roll down the lid of his 49 convertible, feel the sun on his face and drive again.

He says you must believe that you're going to be helped in order to receive it. The bible says so. But he just can't do it. So he tries to get the young girl to believe for him. He says, "When you get depressed that's when the colours get a bit dull and the music doesn't sound the same. I think my soul is after growing hard, like it's in prison." I know that feeling. It's a very alive feeling for the dying and a very dead feeling for the living. Things don't seem as bright as they once seemed and you don't feel as free as you once felt. It could be the sickness of body or the sickness of soul. To the dying, life grows dull and hard waiting to live again, but up there. To the living, life grows dull and hard waiting to live again, but down here. Waiting for things to change, get better so that all of those things that we once loved, like music, we will grow to love again. It will sound beautiful again, not distorted by the sound of people screaming at you and telling you things you just don't wanna hear, or need to hear. We will see paw prints in the snow.

The aging and thoughtful: I'll see you in heaven one day. You're an important part of my life.
The young and spirited: You may not see me, but you'll see my living soul. It is everywhere.
The aging and thoughtful: I wish I could give you a hug but I can't move my arms.
The young and spirited: Well, let me give you a hug.
The aging and thoughtful: If prayers were to be answered, you'd be the one to receive it.
The young and spirited: Why's that?
The aging and thoughtful: You're the quiet type - not the type to offend anybody.
The young and spirited: Of course I'll pray for you.

Elaine 06

Glory be to you, o God.
For the rising of the sun,
For the colour filling the skies,
And for the whiteness of daylight,
Glory be to you
For creatures stirring forth from the night,
For plant forms stretching and unfolding,
For the stable earth and its solid rocks,
Glory be to you
For the beauty of your image
Waking in opening eyes lighting the human countenance.
Glory be to you. Glory be to you.
But where the glistening is lost sight of,
where life's colours are dulled,
and the human soul grows hard.
I pray for grace this day.
I pray for your softening graces.

- taken from the aging and thoughtful's Catholic prayer book