No Separation

Yesterday we celebrated the Day of Remembrance. It is a time to light candles in memory of a loved one who’s passed away in the last year and be grateful for their time in our lives. It is also one of the few times I tackle the subject of death in a message. It’s quite a challenge because there are many ideas within Christianity and in other religions. And there is no solid proof for any of them!

So, I offer this sermon, not as my absolute answer to life and what happens after death, but as one concept that (for me) has the ring of truth to it, that meshes with my current understanding of the spiritual. I have no need for you to agree, and I may even come to a different conclusion tomorrow, but for today I invite you to ponder with me.

As a Christian community let’s begin with the scripture reading from John. The tricky part about John is that it is one of the latest books in the NT to be written – at least 60-70 years after Jesus’ death. Very little (only about 8%) in John is found in the other gospels, and John is the most mystical of the four of them. The author of John is also very fond of metaphor. Given all of this, we really shouldn’t take much of anything in John literally, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t “truth” to be found. Jesus was much more mystical than Christianity ever gives voice to. He respected and kept Jewish religious laws, but they came in a distant second to the importance of his personal experience of Divine Love. I think John draws a better picture of this connection than the other gospels. And I think that Jesus’ ability to have such a deep sense of compassion was rooted in his mystical understanding that God was to be found in everyone, we are all one.

A little while now and the world will see me no more: but you’ll see me; because I live, and you will live as well. On that day you’ll know that I am in God, and you are in me, and I am in you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; but the kind of peace I give you is not like the world’s peace. Don’t let your hearts be distressed; don’t be fearful. ~ John 14:19-20, 27

This is awfully cryptic and yet, also very simple. The “world” in the gospels always refers to the world of materialism, power and greed, a world that doesn’t understand or believe in the spiritual world. Its priorities are diametrically opposed with those of Jesus and his followers. So, of course the world would be looking for Jesus’ physical body when looking for him. Obviously, Jesus is referring to his death when he says “a little while and the world will see me no more.” But because his disciples are trained to see deeper, because they’ve been taught to see with the eyes of their heart, they will still “see” Jesus, because the essence of who he is still lives, and the essence of who they are will live as well. When they come to that level of consciousness, that depth of awareness, it will all become clear: all are ONE in God. As Jesus said, “I am in God, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

There is no spiritual separation.

Philip Newell, in his book A New Harmony, talked about feeling separated from his daughter after she go married from their home in Scotland to her new home in India. But he then seeks to remind himself that separation is an illusion, the illusion of this distance we call space. In reality, there is no such thing as “ultimate separation” between anything in the universe, between us and others and the planet, or even between us and those who have gone before us. Newell says, “…we are all traveling together in one river of life. We carry each other within us. And the universe carries us within itself.”

I believe that at some level we all know this to be true. Over the years I have had many, many people say they have had an experience of someone they loved who had passed away – whether in a dream, or a sign, or a voice, or a feeling, or just a knowing that they are still with us. A part of us knows that connection does not die when the physical body dies.

Cynthia Borgeault wrote a book entitled, Love is Stronger than Death, chronicling her relationship with a Trappist monk named Brother Rafeal, or “Rafe,” before and after his death. They met when Rafe was 66, and despite a 20-year age difference, formed a uniquely deep relationship – part teacher-student, part kindred spirits, part lovers (though not in the physical sense) and completely devoted to each other. So much so that she moved across the country to live close to him for the last year and a half of his life.

Their story was a love story, a celibate one, yet with unparalleled intimacy for both of them. As they grew closer, Rafe wondered aloud if the purpose of their time left together (because they both intuited that his life was coming to a close soon) was to “forge a conscious connection that would endure “from here to eternity.”

The book is a testament to a love that grew and deepened, a spiritual connection that transformed them as they walked the path with the Divine, and gained a sense of balance, believing that the “inner balance that had so long eluded [them] separately [was] because all along it had lain in the whole.”

The last words Rafe spoke to her were, “You’ll see, nothing is taken away.” Still, after Rafe’s death, Cynthia grieved deeply the loss of that growing sense of wholeness.

Rafe was buried according to Trappist funeral custom – his body was laid out on a simple pine board in the monastery chapel for the monks to hold vigil for the night until mass the following morning. After a brief service and meditation, Cynthia joined the other monks in paying their last respects. As she stood before him, she suddenly knew she wasn’t leaving. Not long after that a monk appeared with a piece of cake and some tea saying, “he told me to get it for you.”

She spent the night, mostly kneeling by Rafe’s side holding his hand. She said there she knew nothing but love and gratitude flowing between them. She said she knew no sleepiness, no regret, it was the most “profoundly luminous experience” she had ever had. And there was a distinct “nuptial” feeling to it: a sense that their life together wasn’t coming to an end, but had, in some mystical way, just begun.

When she released his hand, she noticed that the silver ring he had given her for her last birthday was shining a soft, luminous gold. She thought it was a trick of the light in the chapel, but the glow remained through the morning, through the funeral mass and only began to fade once his body had been laid in the ground.

As the months passed after Rafe’s death, Cynthia came to understand that, “True love has no great regard for the boundary between life and death, which is invisible to it anyway; the only thing that matters is that relentless drive toward complete self-giving. Like the candle flame, it will come alive only by expending itself utterly.”

One more quick story. The well-known theologian Marcus Borg passed away in 2015. Sometime afterwards, his wife, Marianne, shared this:

I’m so used to Marc being on the road. I kept expecting him to come home. We were such a good match that I worried what I would do without his love. Then the other day while I was walking the kids (Henry and Abbey), I realized I still feel that love. I still have it – not in a sentimental way, but at a molecular level. You know how Jesus said, “My peace I leave with you’? We’ve all heart it. Oh, I thought, so this is what that feels like.  (Days of Awe & Wonder)

The spiritual path leads us on a continuing opening in love until we realize that I am in God, and you are in me and I am in you… we are all one in the great river of life. No separation… ever.

Love & Light!

Kaye