Afterword Introduction to the original Edition

WHEN SOMEONE YOU LOVE DIES, you weep, you remember your times together, you hold the pieces close to your heart for a while. But finally you let go and move on with life.

In most cases this is probably the best thing to do. But not always.

In certain, perhaps rare, love relationships, instead of the normal imperative for letting go and getting on with life, there are subtle but clear signs that the journey with one’s beloved continues beyond the grave. Rather than ending, the walk together is only just getting under way. This is the stuff of mythology and high romance: the Orpheus journey, The Divine Comedy. But it also happens to real people. I know this because I am one of them.

My partner in this enterprise is not a husband or even a lover in the usual sense of the word, but a Trappist hermit monk who was my close friend and spiritual teacher. His religious name was Raphael. He was as surprised as I was to be called into this sort of relationship, but we both sensed it as a call and felt that it was imperative to accept it and learn to live it out. Even while he was still alive, he said it would be a partnership “from here to eternity,” and this was not just romantic talk, but something he knew from his sixth sense as a solitary and contemplative.

If there is a reason Raphael and I were called in this way, I hope it is not presumptuous to say that it was to walk this path consciously and intentionally. Far more often than is generally acknowledged, those whose love for one another is marked by a particular intimacy and spiritual kinship are invited to continue together beyond the grave. Such unions—sometimes known as “eternal marriages”—come into existence because they are part of the divine scheme. True love expresses the sacred promise that love is stronger than death. And in going the distance on this promise, the two beloveds drink deeply of that complete self-surrender in love that is at the heart of all spiritual experience. In a particularly pointed way, they follow the pattern of Christ.

That this path remains largely unrecognized and the invitation declined is, I suspect, a combination of three factors. First is a general cultural distrust of erotic love as a true path to God—an unease that has rankled ever since Plato and continues to dominate Christian theological thinking, whose spiritual mainstream has been overwhelmingly male, celibate, and clerical. This deeply embedded prejudice culminates in the all-too-frequent assertion that erotic love is a different kind of love altogether from God’s love for us and therefore essentially useless as a spiritual path.

The second is an ambivalent and sloppy theology of death, which allows to stand unchallenged the assertions that the dead have “gone to their rest,” that “their work is done,” and that they “sleep in peace.” While the intent of this is to reassure people, the subliminal message is that the dead are in cold storage, removed from all human involvement.

The third is the current insistence on having “clear boundaries” and a “healthy sense of self” in relationships—priorities that, however laudable, make it difficult to connect with the ancient teachings which claim that the very purpose of true love is to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and, through the strength of that union, impervious to death. The very idea smacks of codependency.

Yet these teachings do exist, and the invitation is real. There is a little known but ample body of knowledge in the Christian inner tradition that supports the possibility the heart already intuits: the death of a beloved does not mean the end of a relationship, but simply a new and more subtle phase of the walk together. If the willingness is there, love can continue to grow—and not only will the couple’s love for each other increase, but they themselves will grow within it as they continue to participate as equals in the open-ended adventure of their ongoing life together.

The walk is difficult—not without its frustrations and anguish. It requires fidelity, faith, and the willingness to bear the obvious burdens of the lack of human partnership and a heart wide open to heaven. But for those able to pay the price, it is a precious opportunity to discover for oneself that true love really is eternal.

In this book I hope to sketch out certain aspects of the path as I have walked it so far with Raphael. My aim here—admittedly tricky to bring off—is to steer a middle course between theory and practice and between personal narrative and spiritual reflection. It is neither appropriate nor necessary to share this story simply as a personal memoir. But the teachings that support the principles of soulwork beyond the grave—and my real point in writing this book is to share these—come largely from the Christian esoteric tradition and can appear abstract and convoluted when not grounded in human flesh and blood. That is the difficult balance I am trying to keep.

My hope is that couples reading this book will be encouraged to recognize the eternal elements in their relationships and prepare in the time of their physical life for the possibility of continuing the relationship beyond the grave if the invitation is extended. For those not so called, my hope is that this book may help them to be more compassionate with those who are; and for those readers who are outright skeptical, to suggest that at that tricky junction where spiritual yearning and human desire suddenly meet in the person of a human beloved, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

In conclusion, I can only say that I accept full responsibility for telling a story that belongs equally to one no longer in the flesh—particularly inasmuch as he was a monk, and of all monks the most private. My sense that he is a willing participant in this project is, I recognize, part of my own circular logic and will rise or fall on the strength of its own truth. I would like to ask forgiveness of those most closely affected—his monastic brothers and his family—if I have inadvertently tarnished the memory of a man who was a dedicated spiritual seeker; and of others who were close to him, if I seem to imply that the part of his life that I shared in any way displaces their own. Rafe and I certainly never expected to be called into this kind of relationship, and we both sensed all along that it was more a matter of being entrusted to each other than of falling in love. But having accepted the call to love one another and walk together the final leg of Rafe’s human journey, we did our best to honor it and discover its truth. He always preferred to call our partnership “the experiment.” This book is another chapter in its ongoing unfolding.

 

Salt Spring Island, British Columbia
Holy Week, 1998