afterlife

Isn't the human body a miracle

In particular, we must take account of the well-known and striking saying of Jesus to the dying brigand beside him, recorded by Luke (23.43). 'Today,' he said, 'you will be with me in paradise.' 'Paradise' is not the final destination; it is a beautiful resting place on the way there. But notice. If there is anyone in the New Testament to whom we might have expected the classic doctrine of purgatory to apply, it would be this brigand. He had no time for amendment of life; no doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires in what was left of his body. All the standard arguments in favour of purgatory apply to him. And yet Jesus assures him of his place in paradise, not in a few days or weeks, not if his friends say a lot of prayers and masses for him, but 'today.

Conner raised an eyebrow. 'Who told you

It seemed like it was always autumn in this field - it was fitting really. Everything was shaded with the bronzes and yellows of faded pictures from an old photo album, it was a realm where uncomfortable nostalgia reigned. I noticed it more after my experience in the dream. There I was an actor in the play, here I was a spectator.

The last slide is Main Street at night, with the castle lit silver blue in the background. In the sky, fireworks are going off, cresting, cracking open the darkness, shooting long tendrils of colored light down to the buildings, way longer than I__e ever seen for fireworks_ I linger on this slide. I study that blue castle and those fireworks and realize that this is the image I__e had in my head of Disneyland for all these years. Just like the beginning of the Wonderful World of Disney TV show. Maybe that__ why I wanted to head here this time. I know it__ ridiculous, but part of me wants to think that the world after this one could look like that.Like I said before, I stopped having notions about religion and heaven long ago__ngels and harps and clouds and all that malarkey. Yet some silly, childish side of me still wants to believe in something like this. A gleaming world of energy and light, where nothing is quite the same color as it is on earth__verything bluer, greener, redder. Or maybe we just become the colors, that light spilling from the sky over the castle. Perhaps it would be somewhere we__e already been, the place we were before we were born, so dying is simply a return. I guess is that were true then somehow we__ remember it. Maybe that__ what I__ doing with this whole trip__ooking for somewhere that I remember, deep in some crevice of my soul. Who knows? Maybe Disneyland is heaven. Isn__ that the damnedest, craziest thing you__e ever heard? Must be the dope talking.(pp.253-254)

How did I picture the life after the grave? I fairly bawled out at him: "A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That's all I want of it.

Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.

Love in this life is expanded by our anticipation of the next life. Those who love under God are never satisfied with small love, or love bound by the flaws of human emotion. Those who love under God dream of another life where they can experience it and live it in God's perfect form, so they seek to build it in this life as much as possible.

Do not love these gardens if you despise the dirt.

Wherever Jordan's going - and I do believe we all go somewhere - think of it as the light that will bring him home.

We live and we die, but we are made of sterner stuff. The carbon atoms in our fingernails, the calcium in our bones, the iron atoms in our blood -- all the countless trillions of atoms of which we are made -- are ancient objects. They existed before us, before the Earth itself, in fact. And after each of us dies, they will depart from our bodies and do other things. Forever.

I will not speak falsely and say to you: 'Do not grieve for me when I go.' I have loved my children and tried to be a good mother and it is right that my children grieve for me. But let your grief be gentle and brief. And let resignation creep into it. Know that I shall be happy. I shall see face to face the great saints I have loved all my life.

The end of this life is not the end of life.

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, each far too little and yet too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer, with that bittersweet release lingering in the doorway, but never quite being sent all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place._ _ Connie Kerbs

We are the voices in the shadows,Between the light and shade,Betwixt life and restful death,In the dark periphery of the unseen.We__e here, At the edges. We are the villainous punished,The innocent murdered or abandoned,Our lives ended by foul means, or unspeakable deeds.We are your lovers long gone; your siblings forsaken.Can you hear us?At the edgesFrom the Foreword of Cautionary Tales - by Emmanuelle de Maupassant

I believe there is no heaven or hell. There are no devils or angels. No afterlife or salvation. My soul won't be incarnated or lost in the oblivion. One day, I will just stop existing... and that's it!

But forever was a useless term, relevant only for the dead.

The world you are in __s the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.