Rebirth, Resurrection, Reincarnation: What's the Dif?

Three days after the twin's death, Easter. I can't help but anticipate a resurrection. I never believed there would be a second coming of Christ as foretold in the hyperbolic predictions of Revelations...too mythological for my reality. Yet, humans use myth to explain the inexplicable and right about now I could really use a viable explanation for the death of Eleanor and Quinn. This Good Friday we, in our faith community, all wrestle on God's Friday, this soggy gray northwest day as the heavens rain down on us in torrents of tears (speaking of mythological hyperbole), we all wrestle with the grim reality of mortality and the ineffable hope of resurrection.

One of my students responded to an essay question on whether or not justice was one-sided or depended on everyone agreeing with his argument that our concept of justice is based on our belief in an afterlife. His hypothesis was that those who believed in an afterlife are less concerned about mortality and less caught up in seeking justice for this lifetime...hmmm? In contrast then wouldn't the exisistentialists be more concerned with justice in the here and now because their won't be a judgment day, an opportunity for salvation in an afterlife? What about the first 1000 years of Christianity where the belief was that we're all simply dead, right now, until the second coming? What about the rapture rage? What about the belief that you live in judgment of your deeds in this life in order to be saved in the next? Obviously the debate over judgment, mortality, and the afterlife is beyond the scope of an SAT Review Essay, but clearly, our decisions about how we choose to live in this lifetime are based on our beliefs about what's next, if anything, and what part does judgment (our own, societies, God's or the gods and goddesses) play along the Way.

Says the Reverend Susan Leo, "Good Friday is the day we can really know that God is with us when our lives are too hard to bear. Good Friday is the day that we lose everything, so that on Easter morning, we can receive God's gift of everything. Be not afraid. It's real life."

I believe I am supposed to find new life every day, every day a rebirth, a resurrection. I don't expect an empty tomb drama each day, a glowing visage packed with metaphor for how I should live my life. That's been done. I'm not going to get anymore signs until I believe the ones that are already here and have come before. Reincarnation is the reality, resurrection, the hope, and rebirth the promise of forgiveness if we trust and believe that our lives (our tombs of living) are simultaneously empty and full. Death and renewal, an unavoidable cycle occurring every second of every day. That's real life.