Life After Loss

We live in a time and culture where accumulation has become such a normative behavior that many of us struggle with doing with less. More than once we've heard the comment that the current financial crisis arose as a sort of cosmic lesson to help us separate our greed from our need.

However we interpret this economic predicament, there is a powerful spiritual opportunity seeded in any great loss. We are forced to face the question of who we are when something has been stripped away from our lives. We may discover that we have invested our identity in our economic status, or career stature, or in physical or mental prowess. Who am I without a level of economic security, or physical ability or worldly position takes us to the heart of the perennial spiritual question.

Is there life after loss? The promise of new life is what Easter is all about. Easter is a time when we celebrate new life. The new life of spring. The resurrected life of Jesus. The spiritual life that we each express on earth. The Christian Sabbath is on Sunday so that we can remember life after death. Not just life for Jesus after crucifixion. It's about the eternal life that we all experience, after a physical death (our ongoing spiritual journey) but it's also about the continuing life that we are granted after the crucifixions and the losses of our lives. Life, like energy, cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, we can release all forms, no matter how precious to us, and believe that we can still have a life, even an abundant life, as Jesus promised and demonstrated. This is a belief worth clinging to, since it's undeniable. There's life after divorce. There's life after a major illness. There's life after job loss or bankruptcy. There's life after the death of a loved one.

Jesus as way shower is such a powerful teacher of how to live with boldness and passion. His example of being willing to put everything on the line, defend against nothing, and face the greatest fears humanly imaginable with equanimity, begs the question, what can't we live without. It may be that what we think we can't live without, is what keeps us from really living. People who have released addictions might agree.