Eric C. Bow

Sometimes a religious truth hits you like a physical blow. Pat experienced it when she first heard “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” – (Rabindranath Tagore).  She cried at the truth of this and printed it out and put it on her bulletin board.  There are other writings besides the Bible that contain religious truths.  God speaks through many minds; though for a Christian, Holy Scripture is primary. Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein nor maybe proved thereby, is not to be required of anyone to be believed as necessary for salvation.

Also, for a Christian the Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’s Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles Creed, are to be received and believed; for they may be proved by Holy Scripture.  The Creeds are summaries from the early church to affirm what Christians believe. They have been and still are standard statements of the Christian faith for over 1500 years.

No Christian whosoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments – and that includes clergy, bishops, cardinals and the Pope.  Our Lord Jesus Christ said: “Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord; and Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the Prophets.”

Some Christian have reduced bible study to simple sound bites useful in proselyting door to door and in big tent rallies. They are overly fond of reducing complex ideas into simple slogans, jingles, and sound bites. Such an approach rarely leads to truth. The Bible is read as isolated, free standing verses. They miss the true meaning – Holy Scripture is about living and fulfilling the truth, listening to the Word in it and in our selves. True Bible study and finding the truth require an understanding of biblical history, the subtleties of Greek and Hebrew and the traditions of 2000 years of Christian – you don’t have to be a scholar, but you do have to be open to God within you and to think and listen. We have a duty to teach our children to think and not to brainwash them into a blind belief in slogans and jingles – to listen for the voice within.

Christianity does not teach that the physical world is vile and polluted, our passions a fall from grace. Original sin was not sex, but disobedience of God is the original sin Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden for.   Sex, as Cynthia Bourgeault says, “…is truly Eucharistic – “This is my body given for you” -a drawing near to the other with all that one has and is; in conscious love; to give the innermost gift of oneself is the most intimate foretaste of divine union that can be known in human flesh.” Christianity affirms the physical world has significance for God and is worthy of study – it is how God is aware of Himself.  The universe is a rational, orderly, purposeful, creation of God that all Christians should know, care for and Love.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” I really believe this as it is what Christ taught.  I also believe that my beloved Patricia is both within me and in Heaven here and now and there is a Garden Kingdom in heaven where she and I will meet again to live with Christ in our resurrection bodies forever. The first part is easy, Cynthia Bourgeault explained it in The Wisdom Jesus thus: “A lot of Christians, particularly of a more evangelical persuasion, assume that the Kingdom of Heaven means the place where you go when you die – if you’ve been good. But the problem with this interpretation is that Jesus himself specifically contradicts it when he says, The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” (that is here) and “at hand” (that is, now). It’s not later, but lighter – some more subtle quality of dimension of experience accessible to you right in the moment. You don’t die into it; you awaken into it.” I think I experienced it the day after Pat died – I woke from a nap into her presence and felt comforted. As for our Garden Kingdom in Heaven and joining her there I just believe. Sometimes I just accept what Pat tells me in her poetry and deep within me.

Pat wrote to me:

“Alone, my feet are

Always running back to you

On the path of dreams.

Better is one glimpse of you

In all your reality.

Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” in itself doesn’t prove existence. It is the awareness of “thinking” that proves existence. God created the universe to be aware of Himself. Creation is an act of self love, God is Love. God knows Himself. The tree in the quad exists because God is always aware of it. The question now becomes, what in us is aware of thinking. Who am I? I am more than that mighty oak in the quad.  The Bible tells us that God created us in his own image, Genesis 1:26 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… “ Christians in every land unite in proclaiming that our God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, I am three? There are two answers, both Yes! First, I am a trinity of heart, soul and mind. Second, in Marriage Patricia and I were joined together as one in and by God. Mark 10:9 “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.“  We are a trinity and shall be forever – Pat, me and our Love and shall be forever One. What proves I exist is the One within me doing the observing, the unity of heart, soul and mind. Pat and I are absolutely real as is her presence within me and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

“I am” is the very name of God, that essence of me that I truly bear, the inner most quality of being alive. When I die it is all that is left of me. It is my reality that exists forever; the energy that can not be destroyed. It is LOVE, God’s Love in and by which we all exist; Love makes us one with each other and God. We are not alone. “…for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21). Pat and I and God exist as one. God made us One within Himself. The real me exists in the One that God made us when we loved and were married. We live in the light of God “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”(― Rabindranath Tagore) When Pat first heard these word, at the end of a church service, the truth of them hit her like a punch in the stomach and she gasped and tears came welling up in her. She had seen the Light, the Kingdom of God exists within us our heart, our soul and our mind. We are persons of love – love is forever. What is this world – for that matter what is the Big Bang – if it is not perceived it is nothing. The universe exists because it is perceived by us and God – it is God knowing himself. God is the great “I am”- He thinks so it exists. He is YHWH.
“Our knowledge of God is paradoxically not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us. It is in proportion, as we are known to him that we find our real being and identity in Christ. We know him in and through ourselves in so far as his truth is the source of our being and his merciful love is the very heart of our life and existence.” – Thomas Merton.

Jesus taught that “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) That Kingdom of Heaven within us is our inner most essence, the very image of God He created us to be.

God also made us One in marriage. Pat and I were attuned and responded directly to one another, our innermost aliveness and quality. In her own words, “You love me royally, as I love you, / seated together in our garden Kingdom, / keeping up our silent conversation, / clothed in robes of joy of every hue.”

God is love and we touch the essence of God when we love. God is the white light of Love. He is both the lover and the Loved, God through Christ and in Marriage has made us One. God is that love!

I sometimes feel I know that One. Then it all falls away and I become the lost one, lonely and missing my beloved Patricia. Where is my beloved, was she ever here? In Pat’s words, “I live in the soft prison of my desires, / Home of all my comforts. / There is no other tenant, / And nothing breaks the silence.”

That emptiness around my heart is at the very Centre of my Oneness with my departed spouse. It is the true me, the centre of our soul. It determines my relationship with Pat and God. I need to awaken to the dawn where Pat is – in our Garden Kingdom.

Consider the grief that lovers feel. It is emptiness, sorrel for your departed loved one, that hollow around your heart once filled to overflowing with her essential being. An absence where everything becomes essential, each sound distinct and bare, and clear. Heartbroken, lonely, wordless, lost, fearful and yes ecstatic. It is the long dark night of the soul. “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come” but, for the surviving lover it is like living in a ruin, in the blank state of knowing her no more. You live in your heart searching for the dawn of your beloved there. Christ said, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Luke 11:9) Be quiet and listen, don’t try to answer now. “Love’s secret is always lifting its head out from under the covers, “Here I am.” אני “ The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen.” ― Rumi.  Love is stronger than death; Love is forever. I shall love my beloved Patricia Bow forever. When she and God are ready that empty space will fill once again with her essential being. She already dwells within and I rejoice in her Love and in the blessed company of the communion of saints.

“You love me royally, as I love you.
Seated together in our garden Kingdom,
Keeping up our silent conversation,
Clothed in robes of joy of every hue.
For us, our royal love has had no parallel:
It rooted, grew, and like a miracle
Spread to the garden where in now we sit.
Clothed in the fragrance of God in it.”
–Patricia Bow 21 June 1970.

Around the heart is an open chamber – that empty place in grief – which modifies our love to complement each other. Two hearts resonate as one and the love grows stronger. When one spouse dies that chamber is empty until that loved one has ascended to the Father and returns in Peace and Love to visit. Yes, there is life after death.

What we feel when we kiss our soulmate is that chamber resonating in harmony like a guitar sound box. Soulmates feel the energy, scent and smell of each other in a kiss. In ecstatic love making soulmates learn not to fear their bodies, sex is a dissolving into oneness. The “This is my body which is given for you” of the Eucharist.

As Pat continued:

“And this long miracle is to discover
The inmost me and you.
To nurse no longing for another,
To forge the soul and its desire together
Gently, openly and forever.
Nothing grows but common flowers
Outside our Kingdom’s wall.
Here alone the magic lies.
We ask nothing; we have all.”

You just know when you have met your soulmate, your other half.

In the gospels Christ teaches us to believe “all things are possible.”  Many Christians assume this means that if only we have enough faith we can fix anything, “ask and you will receive.” So, when a loved one is dying and actual does die despite our prayers, they feel abandoned and disillusioned. Their faith dies with their loved one.  They fail to see that Christ was talking about something much deeper, infinitely deeper and truer. Christ is telling us to keep our eyes open after our loved one has died. She is gone from her earthly body to the One within us all.  As long as you live she still exists united with your soul.

Pat’s epiphany occurred when Fr Carver finished a service with:

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come” – Rabindranath Tagore

She wrote that it hit her like a blow to the stomach and tears came to her eyes.  Our departed loved one will never leave our life; they are there in the small things we do every day. She will often come back to mind in the tear shed at some small memory – proof she is dwelling within. You enter a familiar place and she comes back.  Death is the dawn of your eternal life together in the arms of Christ. Those things which we ought to have done; and those things which we ought not to have done, come back to us with the dawn. They are in the white light of God at the end of the tunnel, part of us and God and of all time. God is the Alpha and Omega – our beginning and our end forever.

“all your deeds and words,

Each truth, each lie,

Die in unjudging love “

Dylan Thomas

God is that unjudging Love. Christ is the Bread of the eternal life and the Cup of everlasting salvation. Our sinful bodies are made clean by his Body , and our souls washed through his most precious Blood.