Immaculate Heart Retreat Center will host a Day of Prayer entitled, “Afterlife 101: What Happens When Our Earthly Pilgrimage Ends?," led by John Fencik, on Jan. 14, 2015, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
My first conscious memory of pondering an afterlife came at the death of my profoundly disabled, brain damaged older brother. He died at 13 years old, slipping away one winter night from pneumonia.
As someone who is a practical materialist, who does not believe we possess any supernatural spirit apart from the self-awareness generated in our brains, and who furthermore does not believe in any supernatural deities, my answer is a general no.
I cannot reconcile the extremes in this world; the beauty of the hawk circling the sky, the grace of the snake sliding through the grass, the culmination of life and death as the Red Tailed hawk swoops down from her dance and grasps the garter snake in her talons, eagerly ending its life and joining its essence to her own.