*Author’s Note: After 800+ essays and poems, WordPress asks this old girl the question – to prompt her reply, we assume. As if, after 800……but, you know the tune.

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Last Sunday, in the second row of the Unitarian congregation of Girard, Blossom McBrier announced her latest impending venture: she, having just turned 99, would celebrate her 100th year by traveling to the North Pole. Seems there had always been thousands of tiny lights in her firmament, and Blossom would seek their source in the Aurora Borealis – even if, as she declared, she froze to death en route.

When I was a kid we, in our family, were raised to face eternity. The sectarian fundamentalists, Christian variety, were into that. Still are, in fact. Life everlasting, after all.

Not to sound glib, the reality was: from birth, the dogma were clear; know that your soul was infinite, and the direction of its path open to the power of free will.

The Bible taught us that God the Father had provided, for lost mankind – gripped by original sin and enmity from its Creator – a way, toward redemption. The source was Jesus the Son, Christ, whose sacrifice on Calvary’s cross paved the way for total forgiveness. Just by confession and acceptance: personal absolution.

And, beyond mere verdict, the reward: eternal life – with God, and the Saviour Jesus, in the Heaven of holy provision. The body would return to the dust whence it had arisen but the soul would continue, forever. World, without end. Amen.

I remember trying to wrap my head around this inaccessible phenomenon, as a toddler. The concept, and my attempt at grasping it, actually made me nauseous. Physically discomfited, I became acutely disturbed by the idea. Comprehending endlessness left me frightened by something even more foreboding: utter powerlessness. Things which had a beginning, a middle, and an end were familiar and comforting and, to a degree, subject to control. Beyond end was a chasm, a black void. I was averted.

Yes. At that particular stage of, for lack of a better word, growth…from that which had no end, I recoiled.

Perhaps growth, mental/emotional let alone physical, would account for a shift in the affect of that perspective. Now, in the “twilight years” or, if the psychics are both real and accurate, the final third of my presence on this planet I can say that my sense and view of eternity has definitely evolved. Everlasting life? Yeah. I can dig it.

Why?

Always driven by creative curiosity, this spirit derives joy from seeking out and finding the new and different. New ideas. New flavors. New places. New experiences. If left to the familiar, I quickly stagnate, even regress. Decompensation, swiftly enacted by the body, even attacks the mind; soon, I am but a slug, repeating tasks like a robot with an excretory system just because it’s handy. Being alive becomes redundant.

But, moving forward allows me reach. Searching yields a banquet of possibility; and, possibilities, they say, are endless. So, why not? Like Blossom McBrier, driven by her teeming need to know, turning in the direction of the North Pole and thermally clad I press on. If life is the absence of decay, or decay just a phase on the brink of rebirth, then being born again – and, again – sounds like a plan.

Yeah. Live forever. Ever, something new, right around the next corner.

Can you dig it? Then, everybody sing!

Hallelujah!

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Copyright 1/10/23 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose thoughts appear and whose name likewise, above this line. No copying, in part or whole including translation, permitted. Sharing by blog link, exclusively, and not by RSS. Thank you for accepting and respecting original material.

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