Gazing into fireplace embers, I almost titled this, "After the Ashes."  It is life's most unsolvable question. Yet we all keep asking it. What is cremation's after-light? Is it a white so bright that it transcends all colors or a nuanced white like the Egret's feathers? 

   Divinity School academics label pursuit of the answer Eschatology. But there is no universal answer. Just our personal ones. 

   In childhood I was already skeptical about a death filled with fiery hells and sweet paradise. Regardless of hints from afterlife round-trippers and ordination as a minister my adult answers remained fuzzy.

   So many give up pursuing logic's unanswerable question. Others land in faith that comforts. "Ashes to ashes" becomes "ashes to light."

   Great. How long does that light last? Does the screen go blank? I don't think so

   Crazy Curiosity allows no rest. I love, but cannot yet live by, Joseph Campbell's line: "We are all falling through time so we might as well enjoy the fall." Death took him soon after I heard that.

   Surrender to God? How? Doesn't God want me to work hard first? Lacking the coordination to navigate the spiritual high wire act of surrendering and working hard I keep slipping off.

   The afterlife answer I settled on may not settle in you. It turns its back on hell and its face to the shades of light.

   I deny hell not because I don't want to go there but because the God of my understanding will not allow it. When a flawed body goes "six feet" down, its soul's energy flies up into Love's energy. Jesus' teachings led me to a "Caregiver God" healing everyone, not just Christians.

   We suffer because our half-lit eyes cannot see and receive our soul's fully-lit healing. My afterlife beyond the white light is a river. There, Caregiver God baptizes us with the waters of peace and serenity. That, I pray, is our universal paradise.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Egret #1 & #2 by Erie, 2019