A Question of Faith

Even though I was Ordained to the Unitarian Ministry in 1996 (and was a dedicated layperson for years before that) it’s important to me that this website is for everyone. Whether you’re a person of faith who follows a specific religion and its teachings or are simply trying to live a good life, each one of us will struggle one day to find meaning in the loss of someone we love. 

Questions of belief and faith – in God, religion and the afterlife – are so personal and so profound. Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew who volunteered to go to Westerbork (a transit camp to Auschwitz) to be “the thinking heart of the barracks” wrote “Is there indeed anything as intimate as (our) relationship to God?” 

What you believe and what you feel about the soul of your beloved, their presence and place after their earthly journey has ended arises from your tenderest place. It’s where poignant and sometimes painful questions as well as hoped-for answers about ultimate meaning and the goodness and dependability of life intersect. And of course, death and loss can shake our previously held beliefs to the core, rearranging our inner landscape of faith to encompass the new, painful reality.  

But whatever you believe, before, during and after the loss of someone you love, you’re in good company. Throughout much of human history, many people have believed in a life beyond life for those who have died. Whether heaven or eternal life, nirvana or moksha, or simply one’s soul re-joining all creation or becoming one with the Great Spirit, people have been comforted and sustained by the idea that death is not the end. 

And most cultures throughout the centuries have affirmed the presence and communication of those who love us “from the other side,” whether through dreams, signs and symbols or even the sensation of physical presence. The stories of the recently bereaved who experience a profound feeling of connection with the beloved are too numerous to recount, but there is no question that they exist. 

And yet, at the same time, the real question of “life after death” remains a mystery to those of us on this side, one which we cannot yet solve, although perhaps we will someday! We cannot yet know what (if anything) lies beyond and so, for many of us, death is simply the end of a life we have cherished, with good memories of love and kindness that live on in our hearts. My own husband was an agnostic; as an economist, he said “I’m a data gatherer and as far as I can tell, there’s no hard data either way. So I don’t believe or disbelieve.” Yet not long before he died he said to me “If I can send you signs from the other side, I promise I will!” And he certainly has, at least that’s the way it feels to me.  

Although I am a minister, we tried to raise our children to find their own spiritual path rather than imprint our beliefs onto them. After their father died, I discovered I had two people with two very different belief systems! It may have been related to their ages or just their personalities, but my eldest simply said “I don’t really believe in all that heaven stuff. Daddy is in my heart now” while the youngest believed with all her 9 year old might that Baba was in heaven with our two cats and often wrote him notes asking how things were going up there. Two children raised in the same family, experiencing the same loss, with vastly different spiritual beliefs. 

It’s my hope that whether you have faith in God or the teachings of wise souls who inspire millions around the world or simply believe in the goodness you have witnessed in your own life, The Widows’ Walk will be a safe and welcoming place to explore the challenges to faith and meaning often arising out of loss. In this supportive community of grief and recovery, may we be open to everyone’s experiences as together, we find our own way. 

The brilliant Iris DeMent wrote a beautiful song that says it far better than I ever could. 

Let the Mystery Be

Everybody is a wonderin’ what and where they all came from
Everybody is a worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me
I think I’ll just let the mystery be

Some say once you’re gone you’re gone forever and some say you’re gonna come back
Some say you rest in the arms of The Saviour if in sinful ways you lack
Some say that they’re comin’ back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas
I think I’ll just let the mystery be

Some say they’re goin’ to a place called Glory and I ain’t saying it ain’t a fact
But I’ve heard that I’m on the road to Purgatory and I don’t like the sound of that
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly
But I choose to let the mystery be.