On life and the veil

On Halloween I felt moved to write a post about Nancy's death, starting with her diagnosis of leukemia in the spring of 2002 and ending with her death a year later.

Yesterday wifie told me that according to ancient pagan lore,











the veil between this world and the next reaches its thinnest point around Halloween.

So I wonder...

What exactly is the nature of this veil?
What does it mean to be alive or dead?
What is the nature of the life force?
What is spirit?

Where does it come from, and where does it go?

Is life a river?











Does life flow through us?

The food we eat, the air we breathe.
We become Earth, and it becomes us
in a continuous fluid,
the river of life.

Then life is like a song,
forever creating itself in the perpetual Now,
always coming into and out of existence.

The two components of life:
1. Instructions (DNA)
2. Force (energy)

Instructions assemble and shape the force.

And so the hamburger I eat becomes me;










and through the process of eating, drinking and breathing,
I become one with the earth;
it becomes one with me,
and so my apartness from the earth is an illusion.

The force itself is life.
And so life continues on.

DNA shapes the Force.
Gives it a personality,
a fingerprint,
a face.

DNA enables the continuation of life threads,
which individually weave together
into the rich tapestry which is
the diversity of life,
the sea of forms,
that each arose and continue to arise from the earth itself.

DNA is the principle of organization.



Each individual is a branch of the vine of life,
and as such exists on a continuum of forms,
each deriving its individuality from a unique combination
of the elements from which its parents were themselves formed.








I am my parents,
or rather a node on the vine from which they arose.
There is nothing of me that wasn't also present in my parents' DNA.











And so although the form of me is unique,
the elements of design (DNA)
and the life force that animates these elements
are only borrowed from the earth.

I am reminded of something Nancy said during her last days of life.
I asked her what she thought would happen to her when she died.
She gestured toward the woods behind our house and replied,
"I will become one with the trees and birds out there,"
and so she asked that her ashes be spread in our woods.