The Big Plot Twist

I think about death a lot. Probably more than your average bear. Sometimes more than I think about life. And I don’t know what that exact ratio is, but it’s probably more than enough to inspire a dark sense of humor and a heaping helping of garden-variety neurosis. DO NOT BE ALARMED, friends, I have been morose my whole life and am in no danger of hurting myself – and certainly not anyone else. But in all my musings, I’ve come to believe that while Hell is a headspace, Heaven is also a state of mind. And that far, far better things to come than what lay behind, as C.S. Lewis reminds us.

By: JANA GREENE

Imagine if at the end of your life – somewhere between the dreaded death rattle and Glory -and after crossing over, you find yourself at a roundtable with every person you have ever loved, and who has ever loved you. And each person in the afterlife is manifested in the space and time they were most happy. The most healthy.

Before we all had to become survivalists out of necessity, even as children. With this life, there is so much weeping.

You imagine that that Mighty Cloud of Witnesses is here to usher you in death. But that’s the zinger, you are told. There is no death. Plot twist!

There never was a death. No sting at all! Just an emergence from a chrysalis, an unbecoming of ego and a becoming of true self.

Around you in the physical, there is weeping as your Earth Side family mourns. They who have held on to you tight in life are releasing their grasp on you, certain that goodbye is forever. They don’t know, you see.

Even as death looms, it’s really just a change of pants. Shedding the bulk of a winter coat. A great kicking-off-you-shoes. A freedom. They don’t know that in your most pitiful state, you are actually becoming resplendent. You are becoming One with every beautiful thing that ever happened or will happen.

Why cry for me, then? I’ll just be in the other room, you’ll think. A whisper away.

Don’t you know that energy created can never be destroyed? That once you are a form of energy, you can never become nothingness? There is no nothingness I will step into. Only the most beautiful muchness you can fathom. Completion beyond what you could have imagined. Togetherness with those we assumed were in a void.

I think we are still learning, in between the death rattle and the last breath. All that we have learned “in the dash” – the time between birth and death – will make sense then. And those cheering from you- invisible to everyone else – will celebrate as you become your Truest Self. Resplendent, whole, and One with all that bear love.

Lord, let it be so.

Blessed be, friends.