The Oasis - May 24, 2023

            I wanted to make you aware, this Sunday is Pentecost. We will celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to those first followers of Jesus and the birth of the church. We invite you to wear red if you come to worship, the color that represents the Spirit. We will also have a baptism! Also, in honor of Memorial Day, the First Parish Cemetery Trustees will host Coffee Hour. For all they do, a big thank you to the Trustees, to Superintendent Todd Frederick, and to the cemetery staff that does such a great job maintaining the cemetery and serving the community.
            For a number of reasons, including Memorial Day, I’ve been thinking about death and the afterlife. I thought I’d share with you an imaginative reflection on dying by an anonymous author.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud on the horizon,
just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with one another.
Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone.”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
“There, she is gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.