Celebrating All Souls

I got a call a few weeks ago from a young man who wanted to know more about UUism. I remember saying to him several times that we don’t spend much time worrying about or even talking about what happens after death. We are focused on living this life.

After, I hung up, I got to thinking about what I said to him and I began to wonder if we might benefit from spending more energy than we usually do thinking about what happens after we die.

Historically the Universalist answer was we’re all going to heaven, yippee, no worries, nothing to think about!

The Unitarians were, for the most part, pretty convinced that when you died, you were dead. What lived on was the legacy you left behind and the impact it had on the living. Focus on living today, the tomorrows of the living will depend on it.

Perhaps you’ve heard this summation; “The Universalists believed that God was too good to damn people, while the Unitarians believed that they were too good to be damned!”

Maybe, for conversational purposes, you’ve adopted some version of either or both of these answers.

What I would like to invite you to do on this day (when Pagans believe that the world of the living and the world of the dead are the most intertwined of the year), is to spend at least a little energy reflecting on your tomorrow...what do you think will happen to you after YOU die?

Do you believe you will live on as a ghost, haunting the people and places you left behind? Will you be walking the golden streets of heaven, bathed in the light? Will your body return to the earth, and your soul merged with the Source? Will you live on through your genetic impact on your children, through your legacy of good deeds and strong character? Will you return again in another form?

Will you go straight to heaven, as Catholics believe the saints do, ready to be called upon to intervene on behalf of those who are stuck somewhere between heaven and earth after they die?

Those of you who experienced Catholicism, (I know that is a lot of you) probably know that today, November 1st, is All Saints Day. Perhaps, you noticed that the title of my sermon is Celebrating All Souls Day.

According to Catholic tradition, since the Saints go to heaven first they are celebrated first. All Souls Day isn’t until tomorrow.

That’s Ok! It is “tomorrow” that I want you to think about.

I suspect that most of the time, when we conceive of “tomorrow”, it is the future that is ever before us- without end...

Today, I want you to think about the day after, (or two days after, or three days after) your life on earth-in the flesh, ends. Your tomorrow!

There are lots of ready-made answers for what happens after you die floating around. All the world’s religions offer some kind of answer. Some religions give the question way more energy than others do. Some have very elaborate answers, some are vague or simplistic.

Maybe at some point you’ve thought about the question long enough to pick out an answer that made sense to you. Or you let someone else give you an answer and that was fine. Perhaps at some point in the past when death was “theoretical”, you answered the BIG question...and that answer, whatever it was, sits in the back of your mind...but you don’t think about it very much...

Then someone dear to you dies, or is near death. Or you grow old or sick and the question comes up again, this time with more urgency and specificity. The answer you might have been OK with before, in theory, may not work anymore. The question comes up again. This time it’s not theoretical, it’s about you and your tomorrow. What happens to me, after I die?

The question comes round again with more urgency and poignancy when the fact that you will die is inescapable. What’s your answer then?

I regret not saying to that young man how important it is for us to be the place where with courage and with love we can just sit with the big questions...like...Why are we here? Why am I here? Who is in charge? To whom or to what do I belong? How shall I live? What happens when I die? ...without rushing to ready-made answers...

Too often, I hear us, I hear myself, describe our religious community as the one that offers a smorgasbord of answers to all the big religious questions. Pick one, pick any, pick a combo platter. Whatever works for you is OK. (...well, within certain limits!)

Yet, it is not that simple, is it?

First of all, appearing to offer even a buffet of ready- made answers, which in my view is preferable to only offering only ONE answer, doesn’t relay how important it is to be that place where we can just sit with the questions.

Just sit with the question.

That’s what we are asked, called to do, to live an authentic, faithful life. To be present to ourselves, present to whatever our current reality is, with enough courage and love to risk really asking the big questions... present to and for each other without rushing to the answers....

It is not about picking and choosing from a buffet full of processed foods!

It is about going for the whole grain!

What I mean is, the most loving and courageous thing we can do with our collective energy is create that safe place, where each of us trusts that we can find the answer that is ours...because we are really and fully present with the question...

When death is imminent, ours or a loved one, we want to comfort ourselves. We want to know that death is not final, or that it won’t hurt. We want answers that will make us feel better about the life we have lived, that is ending...

And there isn’t just one big question about life after death. There’s all the details....Will I be judged? Will I be welcomed? Will I exist? Will I know anything? ...feel anything? Will I know all the answers? Will I know God? Was my short time on earth all there is? Will I know what I have known, who I have known, anymore? Will I be remembered?

Each of us has some kind of answer or answers, already. Maybe we’ve adopted a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Or maybe a whole lot of this, and none of that. Maybe we are sort of hard wired to come up with some kind of answer to what happens to us after we die.

I promise you that the question, what happens to me after I die, grows in importance the closer one comes to recognizing and acknowledging, accepting...that one’s tomorrows on this earth in this body are limited.

You won’t know if the answer you’ve been carrying around with you in your back pocket is your answer, until you really ask the question...sit with the question...feel your feelings, feel your fear, let your natural (survival instinct) denial and your ways of evading the question go...let your group answer go...get out of the buffet line and with courage and love...ask the question again...

Theoretically, we accept that human life is bracketed by birth and death. We focus on what’s in between those brackets most of the time.

And most of the time we know we have roots that go deeper than our own lives, and tomorrow’s that extend far beyond our own individual lives...

Yet the question is still there...What happens to me after I die? What is on my horizon?

Tomorrow is All Souls Day.

I hope you celebrate whatever allows hope and grace and peace to be on your horizon.

Blessed Be!

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