Brian’s Reflection: Friday, February 13, 2009

Literally thousands of wonderful friends have accompanied
me in life, and many now await me in the secret eternity
to come. I have enjoyed the long voyage.

- Ansel Adams, photographer, philosopher

I think about the “secret eternity to come” every now and then. It is not a preoccupation for me. Theologically I believe, in pondering the meaning of the mythological death and resurrection of Jesus, that we no longer live in “Time”. I – and we all – live in a Time without any distinctions of “past, present, and future”. I NOW exist in “the secret eternity to come”. My gut and my heart confirm this.

So, where are those “thousands of wonderful friends” who have “accompanied me in Life”? I do not believe they are “waiting” for me. I know they are beside me. They are never absent from me. Well do I remember my brother calling me to tell me that our mother had died. (She had called him that night, asked him to come over. She asked him to “come and sit by your dying Mother”. Shortly after he went back home, he was called and told that Mum had died. He then called me, about 3 or 4 in the morning; I was asleep.)

After I hung up, I was vibrantly aware of her. I “spoke” to her as I lay and pondered, for many hours. I thought about our odd relationship: I left home at age 21 to become a monk, and saw her and the rest of my family perhaps once a year. For hours I lay in bed and thought about her. Then, I get up and went to my computer. I organized the liturgy for her funeral, and wrote my eulogy/sermon. In the morning, I called her sisters, made arrangements to get them to the funeral, made tea, and sat thinking of this interesting, somewhat unknown human being, and her contribution to Life, and to my Life. But I was intensely aware that she was with me – that the “secret eternity to come” was right then and there.

The “eternity to come” is indeed a kind of “secret”. But the “secret” is that Eternity is Now. Always Now. We are never without those we have known. They “await” – but what they await is not some distant time after Death. They await for us to sense their lively Presence. Then they become newly alive, and accompany us from that moment on. Never has my mother left me. We walk together.

I have enjoyed – and I continue to enjoy – the “long Journey”. No one has left. We walk together. And shall into Eternity.

Brian+