A young man asked an older man, “What happens when you die? If you’re cremated you become ash that goes into the sea or the earth or into an urn and onto someone’s fireplace mantel or a part of you goes into a fob of a necklace. Is that it?

“If you’re buried with formaldehyde and other stuff in your dead arteries and veins, and locked in an airtight box, you deteriorate very, very slowly and look really hideous over time if anyone happened to open the casket. It’s the stuff of horror stories. Is that it?”

“Interesting burial customs we have, huh?” the older man said in a declarative if not rhetorical question.

And then going on, “Well that’s a pretty good description of the physical reality. Actually, I’m thinking on another level, perhaps one more metaphorical. The literal always leaves me a bit cold and empty, like it isn’t capable of dealing with bigger questions such as the one you raise in anything other than a black and white way.

“I’m playing with the imagery of the Realm of God as a just and harmonious eternity within which I, a personal being, who after death and perhaps in some mystical way before death, float in and out of all else manifesting many and various forms — liquid, vapor, physical, spiritual, hard, soft, gas, fire, you know the elements and beyond — in loving relation to all the other personal manifestations of a relational creation.

“Have you ever thought of a relationship with a rock?  An Episcopal priest, sculptor colleague of mine from my days in campus ministry once asked innocently if I liked rocks. At the time, I didn’t understand the sculptor in him and it became kind of a joke between us. I recall that even at the moment he asked he realized the humor in the question for the uninitiated. I’m sure he didn’t know where the rock ended and he began. At the time, I thought he had rocks in his head.

“The other day I found a beautiful rock (It looks like Swedish granite) in the now dry, winter trough between the upper pond and lower pond in our back yard which during the spring, summer and fall is a waterfall. See, the waterfall has changed form and function but it remains of the same substance, from trough to waterfall and back again, with a little help from me and a pump connected to an electric outlet. That part about me, the pump and electricity is the literal interpretation.

“The rock sits by my computer as a paperweight but for the first time in my life it is something more than just a rock. It’s a gorgeous part of God’s creation, a very, very, very slow-moving organism in spite of it being thought of as inorganic in chemistry, a connection to my father who sold Swedish granite headstones, a connection to my son-in-law, the geologist, and a great remembrance of my priest/sculptor friend.

“One day I might be a part of the Grand Canyon in relation to all the various ages of rock.  I think I felt a bit that way when I first saw the canyon the day of my daughter’s wedding on an outcropping. Oh, by the way, there was a flock of Condors flying over the canyon. My son was mesmerized by this endangered species. I think he was lifted up and for a while flew with them, although he is much more handsome than the birds.

“One day I will swim as water in a pristine ocean (I do like salt).  Hey, I’m sixty-five/seventy percent there already.

“One day I shall rise like a Phoenix from the ashes. We live there four months out of the year. My wife thinks I’m already a great ball of fire.

“How could I possibly imagine myself as anything other than ‘I’ in relation to the great ‘Thou’ no matter what form I might take?  Hey, if it’s good enough for the Trinity, it has got to be good enough for me — different forms, one substance.”

The young man furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, stared like he was thinking the old guy had rocks in his head and said, “Interesting. Thanks,” and walked away.