Friends,
As I was reflecting on tomorrow's service of Remembrance, I recalled a presentation from my former European Clergy colleague Rev. Alain Nicolier on remembering/grieving our loved ones, and the spiritual use that process serves. We hope that you will bring a picture of your loved one to church
tomorrow (10/07/21) to decorate the chancel for worship.
Love and Peace,
Ethan
"All the good whatever that a person has thought and done from earliest childhood through to the very end of his life remains . . . . All is written in his book of life, that is, in each of his memories, and in his true self, that is, in his character and disposition. From that . . . he has formed a life for himself and, so to speak, a
soul . . . . All a person's deeds, and all his thoughts, are written and appear as if read in a book when they are drawn from his memory" (Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 2256).
Other passages in the Writings speak of grief as an initiating experience which reveals an individual to themselves and permits them to be uplifted. Thus death is a part of life, and grief is an emotion to fully live and not drive back, if we want to grow and to be spiritually reborn.
Khalil Gibran says to us, about death: "If you really want to contemplate the spirit of death, open your body wide to the heart of life. For life and death are one.
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and immerse oneself in sunlight? When you have reached the top of the mountain you will at last begin to climb. And when the earth reclaims your limbs you will truly dance."
