S1E4 What Happens After We Die (And Does it Matter)?
This week’s episode takes a detour. I had planned to talk about morality, but life redirected me. My godmother recently passed away at 101, and her death pulled me into the oldest of human questions: what happens after we die?
Across traditions, answers vary: heaven and hell, reincarnation, ancestral return, legacy in memory. But from a humanist lens, death is final. And that doesn’t make life meaningless. Instead, it makes it urgent.
In this episode, I touch on:
- How different cultures and religions wrestle with death
- Why a humanist view of mortality isn’t bleak, but clarifying
- Lessons from a century-long life well lived
- Simple secular practices for remembering the dead and reflecting on our own lives
This isn’t about doctrine. It’s about presence. About living deeply, loving well, and leaving behind a footprint that matters, not for eternity, but for the people and communities we touch right now.
Reflection Questions
- What do you believe happens after we die?
- What would you want your living eulogy to say today?
Next Episode
We’ll take this further: if you don’t believe in an afterlife, is there still room for spirituality? Can there be a sense of the sacred without religion?
No gods. No guilt. Just the work of being human.
Transcript
No gods, no guilt, just
the work of being human.
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:This is Live Good, Walk Good.
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:And I'm your host Bianca.
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:Let's talk about living
well without religion.
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:This week I had planned to bring
you an episode about morality, how
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:we decide what's right and wrong
without relying on scripture.
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:But life has a way of redirecting us.
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:My godmother passed away recently,
at the age of 101 years old.
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:Imagine , more than a
full century of life.
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:She was a woman of faith, deeply
Christian, steady in her belief in heaven
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:and the promise of life after death.
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:She prayed every day and she never doubted
where she was going after this life.
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:When I think about her, I
don't just think about her age.
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:I think about her sharp wit and stubborn
independence or the way she still insisted
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:on baking mince pies every Christmas,
her open welcome to everyone who turned
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:up at her door to join her for some tea.
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:She was steady, strong, and
absolutely certain of her faith.
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:Her passing has me thinking
about what happens after we
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:die and does it really matter?
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:I find myself reflecting not on
heaven nor hell, but on what it
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:means to live a good life, when
our time here is all we truly know.
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:Because whether you believe in heaven
and its pearly gates, reincarnation,
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:ancestors watching over us or simply
the finality of the quiet return
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:of your body to the earth, we all
face the same fact of morality.
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:Our time here is limited, and that to me
is not a reason for despair or depression.
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:It's cause for clarity, it means
the measure of a life isn't
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:written in some eternal ledger.
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:It's written in the choices we
make and the way we live every day.
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:It's in how we love, how we show
up, how we leave the world just
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:a little better than we found it.
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:So today I'm going to start
to explore the biggest of big
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:questions, death itself, not from a
place of fear, but with curiosity.
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:Because this episode
is not about doctrine.
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:It's about something
deeper and maybe scarier.
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:The reality of mortality.
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:If death is the end, then the
question becomes what makes life
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:meaningful while we have it?
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:Because maybe what matters
most is not what comes after,
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:but how we live right now.
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:So let's get into it.
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:What happens when we die?
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:It's a question that has haunted
humanity for as long as we've
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:been able to bury our dead.
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:Every culture, every religion has wrestled
with it, trying to make sense of the
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:silence that follows a last breath.
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:In Christianity, which shaped my
godmother's life, the story is heaven or
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:hell, judgment, then reward or punishment.
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:In Hinduism and Buddhism, it's
reincarnation: life as a cycle, a return,
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:the soul moving into another form.
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:In many African and indigenous
traditions, it's ancestral return.
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:The dead don't vanish.
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:They stay present, guiding,
protecting us, demanding remembrance.
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:Secular visions of death tend to
focus on legacy and memory on the ways
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:our lives echo forward in the people
that we've touched, the communities
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:we've shaped, the love we've given.
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:Here in the Caribbean.
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:We carry a powerful mix
of all of those ideas.
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:Death is communal.
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:We don't just bury the body, we gather, we
sing, we dance, we drink, we keep watch.
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:The nine night, which I've mentioned
before, it's part wake, part storytelling,
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:part resistance against silence.
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:I can remember one nine night,
where the air was thick with rum and
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:somebody said, "if yuh nuh talk bout
the dead, them spirit get restless."
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:That line stayed with me because it's not
theology, it's this community psychology.
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:It says, remembrance is how
we keep our people alive.
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:It says, you may be gone, but
your presence is still with us.
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:So what does a humanist say standing
at the edge of the same mystery?
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:We say death is final.
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:There is no next chapter waiting.
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:But that doesn't make life meaningless.
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:It makes life urgent.
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:It sharpens the value of every moment
we have because when the book closes,
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:the only thing that remains is the story
we've written in the time we were given.
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:When someone lives to 101, you
can't help but ask, what does
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:a good life actually look like?
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:For my godmother, the answer
was shaped by her faith.
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:To live well, meant to follow
God's word, to serve others,
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:to be prepared for eternity.
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:That was her anchor, and it
gave her a kind of certainty.
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:She measured goodness, by obedience, by
devotion, by trust in what came after.
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:For me, the measure is different.
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:I don't believe there's a
ledger being kept in heaven.
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:For me, a good life is measured not
by what happens after death, but
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:by what happens while we're alive.
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:By the relationships we build,
the care we give, the ways we face
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:hardship without losing our humanity.
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:When I look at her century of living, I
see resilience: surviving loss raising
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:family, keeping traditions alive.
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:She and her husband moved to Jamaica
nearly 70 years ago, leaving their home
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:on the other side of the Caribbean.
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:They built a life, started a family,
and raised their daughter together.
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:She lost her husband decades
ago, and her daughter now lives
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:abroad and started her own family.
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:I see service, small acts of generosity
that ripple through a community.
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:She never met a person or an
animal she wouldn't invite in.
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:For many years, her home was often
kept open and when asked if she wasn't
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:afraid of being robbed, her response
was they probably need it more than her.
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:I see joy, the laugh, the stubborn
humor, the lightness even in old age.
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:She played the piano well into her
nineties before her hands got too stiff.
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:She loved music and dancing,
and always had a story or two
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:to tell to those who gathered.
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:And I see connection, from
simple tea to homemade treats, to
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:warm hugs for everyone she met.
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:The way people have been showing up to
honor her at the end is proof that love
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:leaves a footprint no grave can cover.
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:From a humanist perspective,
that's the heart of it.
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:A good life isn't about earning
entry into an afterlife.
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:It's about the footprint we leave
on the world we actually touch.
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:The question is not where am I
going, but what am I building?
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:What am I giving?
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:How am I living right now?
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:Because at the end, the things that
remain aren't promises of eternity.
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:They are the echoes of our choices,
still moving through the people we've
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:loved and the lives we've touched.
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:When death feels close, it has a
way of pulling us into reflection.
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:Religion often gives people
ready-made rituals for that:
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:prayers, hymns, ceremonies.
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:But we don't need belief in an afterlife
to create meaning in how we honor the
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:dead or how we reflect on our own lives.
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:So I want to offer two
simple practices you can try.
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:They're humanist in nature.
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:These rituals don't require
faith, just intention.
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:The first is a living eulogy.
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:Sit down with a piece of paper and
write what you'd want people to say
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:about you if your life ended today.
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:Are you living in a way that lines up
with the story you would want told?
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:If not, what could you change
this week, this year, to bring
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:those two things closer together?
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:The second practice is about
gratitude for the dead.
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:Think of someone who shaped
your life, maybe a family
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:member, a teacher, a friend.
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:You can light a candle for them or
simply speak their name out loud.
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:Share a story about them with someone
else, or even just with yourself.
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:You don't need to believe that they're
watching over you for the act to matter.
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:The meaning is in the remembering.
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:This is what I call humanist spirituality.
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:It's not a prayer to the heaven,
but presence in the here and now.
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:Forget promises of eternal life,
but make intentional choices to
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:honor the lives that have touched
ours and to shape the kind of life
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:we want to live while we still can.
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:Death isn't a door to somewhere else.
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:It's a reminder to fully
inhabit where we are.
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:When I think of my godmother, what
stays with me isn't just her age.
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:It's the lessons her life left behind:
the resilience she carried through
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:a century of change, the service she
gave to her family and community,
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:the joy that found her even in the
smallest things and the love that
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:wrapped her life like a thread binding
people together across generations.
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:Those lessons endure, not because she's
watching from above, but because they
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:live on in the people who knew her, in
the ways we carry forward her example.
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:That's legacy.
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:That's immortality in a humanist sense.
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:And it reminds me that the measure
of a life is not how long it
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:is, but how deeply it is lived.
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:So as we close, I invite you
to ask yourself, what depth
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:are you bringing to your days?
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:What story are you writing
in the time that you have?
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:Because the book ends for all of us.
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:The only question is what
kind of story we leave behind.
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:I would love to hear your
reflections on this one.
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:What would you want your living eulogy to
say about the way you're living right now?
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:You can share your thoughts
with me on social media, or
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:send me a message directly.
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:I read every one.
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:Because these aren't
just abstract questions.
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:They're the heart of what it means to live
good and walk good, right here, right now.
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:And next time we'll take this
conversation a step further.
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:If you don't believe in heaven
or an afterlife, is there
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:still room for spirituality?
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:Can there be a sense of the
sacred without religion?
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:We'll explore what secular
sacredness might look like and how
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:to practice it in everyday life.
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:I had planned to spend this week
talking about morality, about how we
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:decide what's right and wrong without
scripture, and we will come back to that.
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:But losing my godmother reminded me
that before we argue over ethics,
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:we have to face the bigger truth.
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:We are mortal.
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:She lived a century of
life grounded in her faith.
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:She believed in heaven, in
seeing loved ones again.
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:I don't share that belief, but I
do share the conviction that a life
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:can be meaningful, not because of
what comes after, but because of
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:what we create while we're here.
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:I know that her life mattered, not because
of where she thought she was going,
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:but because of what she left behind.
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:When we strip away the promise of
eternity, we are left with something
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:raw and beautiful: this life.
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:The one we're in right now.
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:The laughter that lingers in memory, the
kindness that ripples forward, the love
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:that changes us and then changes others.
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:Death isn't a loophole into something
greater, it's the final punctuation mark,
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:and knowing that makes the sentences
in between, the days, the choices, the
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:relationships, all the more important.
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:So I'll leave you with this thought.
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:The best way to prepare for death is
not by worrying about what comes after.
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:It's by living so fully, so honestly
that when your time comes, the story you
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:leave behind is one worth remembering.
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:So until next time: live good, walk good.
