Gravity

There's just no getting around it - fall makes me think about dying and dying makes me think about what's on the other side.

I don't believe in the heaven and hell I was taught in Sunday School, I don't take the Bible literally,
I don't imagine God as Charlton Heston (at least not anymore) but I do spend a fair amount of time wondering about what happens after. I think spirituality is a custom fit, different for everyone, and part of mine is that I can't imagine not being here. When I was a child, I would sometimes look at the sky and the stars and try to understand that we were on a planet and that I wasn't just looking at a pretty ceiling. The concept was and still is beyond my grasp. Like electricity or infinity or wireless connections, I just don't understand how it all works. I can't make sense of the idea that if not for gravity, we would all fall off. Galaxies and such things are the products of creative minds and Star Trek episodes and sometimes I think it's all nothing but science fiction.

Still, death seeks and finds us all. Maybe it will be Brad Pitt in a tuxedo, maybe a hooded, faceless figure with a scythe, maybe a simple tunnel of light to guide us or even a stairway to the sky in the company of angels and friends. Or possibly nothing, just like extinguishing a candle. However it comes, I hope I will be strong enough, healthy enough, and independent enough to want to resist. If not, I hope everyone will remember how I feel about being kept alive by any artificial means and not make me save up sleeping pills. There is no dignity in dying old, sick and alone and I do not want to have to invite death in.

The mystery remains. Whatever we believe - what is or isn't on the other side, whether there even is an other side - we can't know. We aren't meant to know. So until the phone rings and it's Mary Baker Eddy letting us know, the best we can do is trust and try to be unafraid.