Spirit and Soil

This Easter marks the one-year anniversary of my friend Melanie Magee taking her last breath in the land of the living. She caught Covid-19 for the second time. In our last direct message exchange, I told her we were praying for her, and I sent her my phone number. She wrote back: “adding you to my contacts…thanks…give me a few days.” A few days later she was gone. I am convinced that “a few days” was a reference to resurrection. Like Jesus, Melanie has gone through death and come out the other side. She has moved on to the great cloud of witnesses and merged with God's love in a new way. 

The ancient Jews who wrote the bible believed that "heaven" was God's space on earth, not a disembodied destination where we go when we die. It was Greek philosophy that separated the heavenly hereafter from life on earth. In Genesis, it says “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” At the beginning of the bible, dust is the eternal destination of every living being. I believe that Melanie still speaks through spirit and soil. She’s changed forms, just a breath away, protecting and serving us on our earth journey. My Easter hope is that when I die, I will rise up and be reunited with the loved ones and spiritual leaders who have gone before me—and we will ride on the wind together, working to redeem the world.