Afterword on Afterlife

I’d intended to move on today, beyond reflecting on the afterlife, which had been prompted by yesterday’s Scriptural readings from the Catholic Lectionary that focused on that issue.  But our priest delivered a masterful homily, and that homily brought me right back where I had been last Tuesday.  I had distracted him, he had said, when I admitted to not really believing the phrase from the Creed “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”  How could a person who worked for his whole life at a Catholic university say he did not believe this article of faith of his church, he’d said, shaking his head.  And yesterday he gave me a challenge by way of invitation.  Read the story yourself.  See what it does for you.

In the early 1900s, Charles Blondin became famous around the world for his tightrope walking.  When he had gathered a huge crowd at Niagara Falls and wowed them by crossing the gorge several times, he brought a wheelbarrow out onto the rope and asked if they believed he could walk across the rope with it.  The crowd roared that they believed he could.  When he asked the crowd if they believed he could wheel someone across the falls in that wheelbarrow, again the crowd roared their belief in him, applauding wildly.  But when he asked “since you all believe that I can do it, which of you will be the first to volunteer to climb into the wheelbarrow and prove it to the rest of the crowd?
  Of course, no one did.  In truth, Blondin’s manager acted as if he were in the crowd, and came forward.  But everyone in the crowd came to admit there along the sides of the roaring falls what I had to admit there in the silent church.  It’s one thing to say you believe, and another to act on it.

Do I believe in an afterlife in which I will be aware of what’s happening, when I will have a body, when I will perhaps see my mom and dad, my brother Dan, and all of the saints who have preceded me in death?  Well, I believe it possible, but I don’t live for it.  This morning while I was pulling the glowing embers from the back of the wood stove so that they would ignite the fresh firewood I was about to add, I stopped and felt their heat on my face.  I watched the flames lick the sides of the logs then, and imagined the fires of hell, letting myself wonder whether god would submit anyone to that for a moment, not to mention eternity.  It was harder to admit as a possibility that the idea of heavenly companionship, but I can say I accept it as possible.   And I admit that if I did believe hell to be certain, I think there are some things I’d do to avoid it. But I left church thinking that while I believe the physical afterlife to be possible, I make my life choices based on ethics.  No, scratch that.  I make my life choices pressured by ethics to compromise my essential mediocrity.  I would feel guilty buying a fancy car while I can look into the faces of the poor I know who have no car at all.  My behavior is impacted by a sense of justice, but I will admit, it is not determined by it.  I’m lukewarm. 

Oh, I’m not beating myself up.  I’m just admitting that I’d be one of them in the crowd, yelling and clapping.  Yeah, Blondin, I believe in you.  But I wouldn’t get into the wheelbarrow.  I’m not putting my life on the line.  It’s a good thing, I think, that the Catholic Church is sometimes likened to a boat.  You either get on the boat or stay ashore.  But whole I think it’s an effective symbol. I admit that if the church ever cast off from the dock on which it has been tied for all of my life, I don’t know that I’d get aboard.  It’s nice to be able to come and go, to feel affiliation and absolution, but if it were a wheelbarrow I doubt that I’d climb into it.  There’s cold comfort in knowing that I’m in a like-minded crowd.