When We Will Rise

'Ppreciate the post, Pistol Pete.

(An a-less 'ppreciate is a genuine common Okie-ism.)

Greetings from hell, or temperatures (and humidity) comparable thereto. 105°F today with gusts into the 110's, and danged if it don't look like 105°F+ again tomorrow.

Just another August weekend in Oklahoma. Sip a lemonade and stay wet in front of the electric fan, and wait it out. Survival mode.

~♥~

So… the plan was to scatter (some of) my cousin's ashes at the old family farm, out where her parent's ashes were scattered. Out at the farm. Many miles' drive from where the service was. Then hike across the yard. Climb up the hill. Trek through high grass and a multitude of Missouri bugs.

However, for some reason, as we all (Milady & me, Daughter, and my late cousin's two daughters) walked out of the nice, air-conditioned Episcopal Church and into the afternoon's fires of Hades, that plan got revised. We decided, dear cousin would keep just fine, and we could try that whole ash-scattering thing in September. Or October. Some time after "tick season," at least.

Somebody quipped that, after all, my cousin wouldn't have wanted us to have to go through that.

Oh, I dunno, I said. She'd be glad to watch other people go through that. While sitting on the porch sipping a margarita and chuckling about it. Her sister's husband said some nice words at the ceremony, and reflecting off of Psalms, said, she hadn't a mean bone in her body. True. But she could enjoy a nice bit of snark or a chuckle at the expense of the goofy.

It was a nice ceremony.

~♥~

Do we rise soon after death? ("Gramma is smiling down on you, honey.") Do we rise only at the End of Time? Maybe not Time, maybe just the End of our World? Occasionally, someone just skips death, translates directly. in a "chariot of fire." (Says a lot about the spiritual qualifications, that we really only have one recorded instance of that.) Might there be interim arisings, not immediately after death, but periodically prior to the End of Time? How about six of one, half a dozen of the other: some rise right away, some only at Gabriel's trumpeting?

Theologians love to kick these around, and the most doctrinal believers will go to war over it (of course, just like any other doctrine). Original bodies or new bodies? Judgment based on one short mortal life or Purgatorial remedial schools? We savage the scriptures to support our beliefs, and sometimes might on rare occasions just by accident look to the scriptures to instruct our beliefs, but nobody knows! Largely because Jesus forgot to tell us where to put the comma in his remark to the thief on the next cross over. Then again, he did say something about preparing new houses for us; as the preacher-man reminded us today, Jesus said, if it weren't true, I wouldn't have told you so.

Today, I'm going to believe my cousin is already up there, with her parents and grandparents and friends gone before, learning to paint in 3D in colors we can't even imagine, enjoying her shining, beautiful new form that reflects the true soul previously trapped in her crippled mortal body. And if I might be off in belief in a few details, I'm sure it must somehow be so in spirit, in eternity, as God is merciful and just.