Stairway to Heaven
Image courtesy of Jim Burklo
(I received a very soulful and sad email last week from one of my readers, whose faith has "deconstructed" without anything positive to take its place. The reader lamented the loss of belief in a supernatural God, and in an afterlife of eternal reward. In effect, the reader was asking: is that all there is? To which I offered this reply.... )
I'm glad you contacted me - I join you in your grief.... here are some thoughts that might offer comfort –
Burklo ident 2023
My view is that God = love. Period! No less, and no more…. To put it in terms of Christian myth, the supernatural, all-mighty God who was a “guy in the sky” died on the cross with Jesus, and the God who is unconditional love emerged out of the tomb three days later. The fact that love exists at all, anywhere, is a thing of cosmic significance. It is the ultimate miracle. It is the crown of the creative process of the universe. The fact of love in our lives, if only in glimmers and hints, is something that should leave us astounded. That such love could emerge, if only in our little dot-sized spot in the cosmos, is a very, very big deal. For me, religion at its best is poetry about the experience of this unconditional love.... an experience which can be evoked with contemplative Christian practice....
My view is that while there is no “objective” afterlife, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that there is a “subjective” experience of eternal life that many people have in the process of physical death. We get to a point where all inputs from the outside world are cut off, and a short period of consciousness continues as a vivid dream-state – and in that experience, there’s no sense of time…. so, subjectively, it is eternal and very real. We’ll have no experience of it ending. There are lots of stories of people who have had near-death experiences suggestive of this state. So it seems to me that we do well to prepare for this subjective eternal life by cultivating our imaginations with love and beauty. Which of course is what we do well to cultivate in order to have good lives while we’re living!