Watsonville First United Methodist Church

Pajaronian Column for Oct. 31, 2025
by Rev. John Song of Watsonville First United Methodist Church

 Unwelcomed visitor at our Dia de los Muertos Service on Oct. 26th
 

Halloween is upon us. So is the celebration of Día de los Muertos / The Day of the Dead in our community with Mexican descent by gathering around the gravesite to honor and remember the dead. They acquaint themselves with the reality of death as part of the fabric of life. It is a time when the veils between the worlds are porous. In this meeting place of “between” the world, the living and the dead meet to celebrate the mysterious and magical meeting place of the living and the dead. The Christian belief in the “Communion of Saints” is an acknowledgment of the reality of the living communing with the ancestors.

The Hebrew scripture reminds us in Ecclesiastes 7:2, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.”

When you think about death, is it with reflection, curiosity, and ease? Or is it with trepidation and fear? Do you even contemplate this most significant passage of your life? 

Facing death is our last important life initiation in earthly life. Although our culture associates death with fear, tragedy, and loss, and sees it as something to dread, we can choose to view it differently. We can explore our relationship with death as something that might even feel like some kind of wonder.

What if death were approached as a joyful transition of the soul’s journey of how birth, life, and death are all parts of our soul’s experience of being human.

One of the enduring characters in the West that people associate with Halloween is the Grim Reaper—usually a skeletal figure, who is often shrouded in a dark, hooded robe and carrying a scythe to “reap” human souls. People dread the Grim Reaper because when he shows up, he is to collect that person’s soul.

I see the Grim Reaper as a figure who reminds us that our lives are finite. The 19th century Chief Crowfoot who died during the Blackfoot Crossing in Canada, shared these words of wisdom: “What is life?  It is a flash of firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” Plato’s famous final lesson to his disciples, given just before his own death was “Practice dying.”

It’s human to feel invincible to time.  We think death only happens to others. We constantly over estimate how much time we have in life. Yet in the end, we’re all dead. This is a shared human reality: death and taxes.  

If our lives are finite, here is a question everyone should be asking: “What have I not done that I know I must before I depart?” That might be making your Living Trust, making amends with people you have wronged, making that trip you always wanted, making that phone call to a person you have put off, or writing a letter.  The list goes on. 

Someone once said, “Show me your calendar, and I can tell you what you most value in life.” Is there any reshuffling of priorities that you need to make with the limited time you have here on earth? What if you live each day as if it’s your last? That would mean not putting off what matters until all other boxes are checked. I’ll get to it when… I’ll make time for that after…   I’ll be happy when… These are reasonings that regrets are made of.  

And one would do well to accept, grieve and use this reality as fuel for living a deeply, meaningful and satisfying existence. Mary Oliver says in her exquisite poem, “The Summer Day”, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Take a Risk
Have that tough conversation
Ask for what you want
Start that project (you know the one)
Do something kind
Make something delicious and share it
Spend time with people who matter to you
Learn something new
Walk in nature (without the AirPods)
Meditate, pray, dance your emotions
Rest from ceaseless striving
Love yourself, accept yourself, if you dare!

What have you come here to DO? What have you come here to BE? Create what you came to create, before it’s too late.

    John

Dear Friends,

What happens when we die?

Celebration of Día de los Muertos / The Day of the Dead and the All Saints Sunday are intrinsically tied together. I thought I’ll take this opportunity explore the question, “What happens when we die?” What I attempt to write is my take on what I believe up to now from all my learning and reflecting on this subject.

In the Gospel of John 14:1-3, Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God and trust in me. ² In my Father’s mansion there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again to take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” 

I think when we die, first of all, we’ll be surprised by the love that’s waiting for us. The unqualified acceptance of our being, the depth of love that’s waiting for us, and the intelligence that we are being returned to. Basically, I see death is a time of homecoming, a time of expansion, a time of remembering things that we forgot. It will be a time of remembering the deeper identity of who we are, our original identity, our soul identity created in the “image of God.”

I like to think that when we die, we are escorted into this soul territory of God’s kingdom. It’s a process in which people are at different stages of their own spiritual and evolutionary development. Some people need more remedial work than others. People who have given themselves over to violence and anger, injuring of other people and violating the fundamental oneness of life, often have to be carefully and gradually go through a process of repairing their injured souls.

And then there are people whose lives have been given over to compassion, generosity, and service, who lived in alignment with God, move through this transitional period more smoothly and rapidly.

This is the process of digesting your life, digesting everything that happened to you, everything that you have done and not done. This is what near-death experiences of people live tell as “life review” they saw at the cusp of death. Eventually that entire digesting of your most recent life ends and you return to your deeper identity. Your egoic identity gives way to your soul, which is a much, much larger, expansive identity.

On the All Saints Sunday, we talk about “the communion of saints.” This is a community of beings when we die is not a community of simply dead human beings. They are, rather, community of souls. And souls are a hundred thousand-year-old beings, not a hundred-year-old beings. And the community of beings in the afterlife is basically this community of souls, community of beings with deeper knowledge of the truth. Here, older souls assist younger souls, more evolved souls help less evolved souls. We dwell together.

How do I know all that? I don’t. It’s the best I have come up with for now.

“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.”  “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.  Long before we first heard of Christ, He had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”  (Ephesians 1:4, 11-12)

Yours in Christ,

    John