while we ARE
Some of my blogposts do not make it past Draft and may eventually be deleted, or I may press Publish, or it may stay in Draft until the eschaton; this is one of those; I intend to wander and think and remember. It's because I'm still agonizing over Kristen's loss of Pacey yesterday. He was critically ill and she took him to the vet knowing what the vet might say but hoping against hope. Anyone who has ever loved and lost a pet understands, as do I even as my agony is about Kristen; I can hardly bear it when one of mine is hurting.
There was the film "All Dogs Go To Heaven," and any dog owner and lover knows it's true. This death of Kristen's cat brings it to mind, and the entire nature of my own faith in the human realm. So, I'll muse on it a bit.
That said, ...
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Emily Dickenson's poem
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth -
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity -
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Until Eternity. There are facts of the Creator's creation that are universal and do not depend, indeed are totally unrelated, to what humans, individual humans or groups of humans, believe or doubt. Counter to what, in fear and hope, we like to believe unto egocentric certainty, we do not control nature of which we are simply an evolved part on one evolved planet in one solar system on some ring of one ordinary spiral galaxy among trillions. In the stretch of what seems like the Universe's eternity, though it's really only, what? 13.8 billion years in Earth Time, we exist, we ARE for the moment. There was a Time when we were not, and there will be such a Time again and forever after, and only the Creator will remember that we ever Were.
Thomas Hardy writes that even the Lord Most High will have forgotten:
"Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: Such world I fashioned not."
And, rhetorically, what difference will remembering or forgetting make to us then anyway.
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Realizations can make me wish I were still immersed in instead of a lifeTime of education, study, exploring, disillusionment, and contemplating religion and religions. My New Testament professor at theological seminary characterized himself as "the world's greatest skeptic," which I might argue with him that it's not him, it's me. I might rather never have realized. Schleiermacher says there is implanted in each of us a sense of the infinite. He's right, and it's a human problem that's not shared with other animals. It's from our puzzlement, lack of understanding and need to have answers as we look around at nature's workings and, fearfully, up into the night darkness and listen, sometimes chuckling, often trembling, but feeling bound together, comforted, informed, assured, and eventually faithfully certain as our tribal storyteller spins his campfire stories. Each storyteller with different details for her/his tribe, but all of them fashioned to calm our fears, especially our fear of dying and death with eternal oblivion that is beyond our comprehension: surely there MUST be something after for us and those we love?
Seemingly ages ago there was a weekend evening radio program that we gathered round to listen to: "It Pays to be Ignorant" and we are, and we know it, but we can make everything okay with our campfire stories.
Margo comes to mind again. Margo, whom I've remembered here any number of times over +Time's fifteen years (October 2010 to October 2025). Margo was a parishioner who worked with me in the church office more than a quarter century ago. Margo's heritage was Indian, Native American, and she liked to tell me her tribal faith stories, campfire stories. They were charming, and I always enjoyed listening. I don't recall the details, but one day Margo told me a story that was absolutely outrageously ridiculously incredible. Responding, I said, Margo, that's impossible; surely you don't really believe that?
Margo said, Yes, we know it's impossible, but it's our story and we believe it. Besides, Father Weller, you Christians also have stories that are impossible and incredible that you really believe, you know.
Every religion has its campfire stories. Some make us laugh, some can make us cry, and all of them assure us and make us belong, One.
All dogs go to heaven. Kitties too.
RSF&PTL
T90