Birth and Rebirth

 Isn't she beautiful? Our home. Our refuge. She protects, sustains, provides, and ultimately receives us back to herself. She will surely outlive us, a little worse for the wear; but she will heal as she always does. And when the time comes for her passing, she will do it with grace, returning matter and energy back to the cosmic mother who bore her. From there, who can say? She may become part of the moon or neighbor planets. Her rock and dust and ash may bond together into new objects, never seen before, slipping easily into orbit around the sun. And when that mighty star finally meets its own end, Earth's new life may take her to distant systems, or one day become food for a whole new universe. Her elements, her heat and light and beautiful music will endure and transform into things we cannot imagine. Such is the way of eternity.

This is the way I picture eternal life, anyway. Not an everlasting reward or punishment, not a unending karmic reboot, but a glorious cycle of birth and rebirth. A beautiful economy of matter and energy, delivering the new, and receiving the old with the promise that nothing is ever lost. Everything will return.

There are ancient traditions that teach about a soul that returns again and again, staggering its way toward enlightenment. I just can't get my head around that. Others teach about eternal light or everlasting fire that wait for souls who didn't live their flash of life here on earth by the right rules. That's never sat right with my heart either. 

But this, this feels like coming home to me. This is a God who makes sense. A rational God. A just God. A loving God. A God whose kingdom is contained inside itself. The Kingdom of God is within you. Among you. The Buddha, the capacity of enlightenment is within you. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

George Harrison expressed the great truth he found in the Hindu tradition when he sang "Give me Light, Give me Love, Keep me free from birth." I don't know enough about what he believed to understand that, but I feel differently. I find such comfort in the idea of rebirth. I love the idea that my Grampa Johnson and George Gershwin and Thomas Payne and Emily Dickinson all live on in me whenever I sing their songs or honor their lives or read their poetry or use the name my Grampa Robert gave me. When I climb the mountain to the place where my parents are buried, I know that the grass I kneel on is alive because they lie beneath it. And I hope that when I have returned to the earth in whatever form that takes, that my life will continue in the lives I have touched, and that the grass and trees will find good use for me. If I have blessed anyone in this life, I hope they will keep that love alive by loving someone else. 

And I find great joy in the knowledge that when the Earth returns to her Mother, we will return with her. 

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

I Corinthians 15: 51,52 (KJV)

I won't pretend that Paul had the same kind of resurrection in mind that I envision, but I have to admit that I like the resonance.

Peace, y'all.