Friends: 

Just a short note to let you know our dear friend, Stephen B. Gladish began his transition to fullness of life in the spiritual world at 6:10 this morning.  As of this writing, I can confirm that there will be a Celebration of Life at Sunrise Chapel, 3pm on June 10th.

With Love for our dear friend, we share the following from the Teachings for the New Church:

"When someone's body can no longer perform its functions in the natural world in response to the thoughts and affections of its spirit (which it derives from the spiritual world), then we say that the individual has died. This happens when the lungs' breathing and the heart's systolic motion have ceased. 

The person, though, has not died at all. We are only separated from the physical nature that was useful to us in the world. The essential person is actually still alive. I say that the essential person is still alive because we are not people because of our bodies but because of our spirits. After all, it is the spirit within us that thinks, and thought and affection together make us the people we are.

We can see, then, that when we die we simply move from one world into another. This is why in the inner meaning of the Word, "death" means resurrection and a continuation of life." (Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell #445)