Article August 21, 2006 Issue

GRIEVING? LET THE CHRIST WIPE YOUR TEARS AWAY

BY REBECCA ODEGAARD

All of us, at some point, must deal with the prospect of grief when someone close to us, or even a distant acquaintance, passes on. What seems so hard sometimes is that while we might say that someone has "passed on," we're thinking or feeling that she or he has actually died. But the terms mean two quite opposite things.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "In the illusion of death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that they have but passed the portals of a new belief" (Science and Health, p. 251). So, while death refers to an illusion of the material senses—the same senses that report all sorts of visual tricks and deceptions—passing on implies ongoing, uninterrupted life. And grief cannot coincide with the knowledge that life is purely spiritual and so continues forever.