Tag: heaven

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Death is swallowed up by life

Between my dad’s death and his funeral, I dug a new vegetable plot and wove a fence around it using willow branches I had just pruned away. Dad’s body was placed in a wicker coffin, and this plot reminds me of that. With the coming of Spring, the upright branches have begun to sprout with new life.

I tend to talk about my dad dying rather than passing away because I want to face what happened head on. This was my first direct experience of death and, although it was a great privilege to be with my dad as he died, it was quite confusing. He suffered a heart attack and while I waited for the ambulance I tried to reassure him that I was with him, at the same time as not being sure whether he was still with me.

I witnessed my dad struggle to cling on to this life – but what was going on with that eternal part of him, his ‘being’, for want of a better word? As I read 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 the other morning, I was struck by these words in verse 4: so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. This is an extraordinary image of what happens when we die – our being is somehow engulfed in that greater life that is God. Our very being joins with the ground of all being and we fully realise our unity with God, as we are hidden in Him with Christ. My dad was not religious, and he had good reasons for that, yet the things that were most important to him: justice, integrity, and the equal value of all human beings, are important to God too and, I am sure, continue to bind them together.

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Does the fruit of the tree of life have grubs in it?

This year, my fig tree is producing lots of fruit. Unfortunately for me, the birds in my garden also have a taste for figs and so I have taken to picking the fruit before it is fully ripe, since the birds swiftly demolish any that I miss. Even then, about half the figs I harvest contain a grub or two who have eaten their way through a good part of the flesh.

And so, as I was reading the words of my daily prayer for Sunday morning: Come and shelter under the tree of life, enjoy the cool shade and taste its fruit my mind went straight to my fig tree. In my imagination, I picked a ripe fruit and settled myself down on a shady chair – but I stopped myself short, did I dare take a big bite? What if it were full of grubs? Could the fruit of the tree of life have grubs in? Surely not, since heaven, where the tree of life is found, is perfect! Surely there is no place in paradise for grubs, slugs, nettles and everything else that causes me trouble?!

Of course, this is a philosophical question, it being highly unlikely that the afterlife will resemble life on Earth, and perhaps I shouldn’t make so much of symbols anyway, particularly apocalyptic ones? But it did strike me that perhaps at least some of the fruit of the tree of life would contain grubs. The insects they will grow into have a role to play in the ecosystem, just like the birds who enjoy their figs as much as I do.

It’s interesting to notice that I can come to terms with sharing the fruit of the tree of life with the grubs and the birds, while sharing the figs from my own tree is much more problematic. I think that, since I planted and tended the tree, I see them as my figs, that I have an exclusive right to them.

It looks like the problem here might be my selfishness and anthropocentrism! Maybe heaven, the kingdom of God, is where I can share my figs with the birds and the insects without begrudging them their share, after all:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah 11:6