This week marks 26 years since the
time I met the Divine Woman. Understanding
a portion of the work she does, I gratefully gave my heart to her. I felt her
gratitude and she told me, “I love you, too.” This was a marvelously
transforming experience. It is taking me the rest of my life to unpack the
meaning of that brief time when I was in the spirit and felt my heart burn and my
soul expand, when I was filled with such joy that I thought I might not go on
living on the side of the veil.
I have since then the habit of reflecting
on all things in light of Mother God, who is with us. One such thing is
mortality. It is easy to feel finite, lonely and afraid when contemplating our
own mortality or the loss of another.
Sometimes people say, “A person is not truly dead as long as they are
remembered.” Most have those who remember us fondly and will mourn when we are
gone, but they also will pass on. What then?
There
is one who knows us who does not fade and that is God. As I recall our meeting
on the side of the veil I thought, “She is immortal, glorious and so full of
life that all things in this world pale. I would not mind being gone since she
endures and loves the World. She would remember me with fondness and love. Her
memory is perfect. If she were remembering me then I would not be dead. For she
is Life. All things are real where she is. And there is no death. I will be
alive in and through her. Where she is
there is no death but only life.” And thus
I saw that there must be a resurrection where matter and spirit are joined
together for she is fullness and fullness implies a union of all the ways of
being: spirit and matter.
In
this put to rest for me the question of eternal life. To me this came with the
force of a mathematical theorem. Did I
not believe in Jesus’ words before? Yes, but I always found room to doubt when faced
with the separation that is death. Now,
I cannot doubt. I do not know the details of how the mortal puts on the
immortal, but I know that in her wisdom and his power that this will come to
past.
When
I was a very little boy, four or five years old, I told my grandma and parents,
“I have a Grandpa and Grandma Jackson and a Grandma Allred. What about Grandpa
Allred?” They told me that he had died. I wanted to know what this death thing
was. They told me various things about our bodies getting so they could not
work, explanations that were not compelling to me. And they ended saying that
at some point God sends the Angels to come and get our spirits. Then our spirit
leaves our body and goes to live with God. I thought this was very unfair. I
had just gotten here and the thought about leaving made me sad and upset. I
declared, “When they come to take me I’ll tell them I won’t go.” I think that Mother
God smiled and answered me in her good time.
Because
I think of this incident when I think of my current understanding, I think the little
child was right. No one given life by God should go from life to death. In God’s
love we don’t. There is a time of separation before the resurrection, but the
resurrection must surely come. Jesus came that we might have life more
abundantly. And She is Life. That is one of her names. Where They are there is
no death only life.
The words that Jesus spoke to the
Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, acquired new meaning and
force to me.
Mark 12:26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the
book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God
of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.
Or Luke 20: 38 For he
is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.
(The pronoun gender is not so
important here.) so read it this way.
For she is not a God of the dead,
but of the living: for all live unto her.
This
is God’s answer to a small child’s demand to know the rightness of things, the answer
to the dark nights of the soul when we feel finite, lonely and afraid and contemplate
our own mortality or the loss of another.
Man’s beauty is as the beauty of
flowers of the field which bloom for a day and then fade, but God’s glory
continues forever. Here is the good
news. We are part of that glory. God before the cosmos began loved us and covenanted
to find us and bring us home to Life.
