Often I talk about this around All Souls Day in early November or drop a bit of it into a memorial service, but we know our questions about the Big Questions happen all the time, so there’s never a bad time to consider this one.

As Unitarian Universalists, we count among our core values the idea of Pluralism – that wisdom comes from many sources throughout the world, and that Love is what holds us together, however that Love is expressed. What this means is that we don’t have just one idea about the afterlife.

Now our forebears, the Unitarians, and the Universalists, did have some ideas:

The Unitarians as William Ellery Channing noted in his 1809 sermon Unitarian Christianity, conceived “of heaven as a state where the love of God will be exalted into an unbounded fervor and joy; and we desire, in our pilgrimage here, to drink into the spirit of that better world.”

On the Universalist side, heaven is seen similarly – a place of Glory, as Hosea Ballou would describe it. The biggest difference between early 19th century Unitarians and Universalists was the mechanisms for salvation itself, and the state of one’s soul. For many on the Unitarian side, and even some Universalists, there was punishment, or at least purgatory, after death, where a soul could work out their sin issues before going to that state of everlasting purity and happiness. But for the Death and Glory crowd, heaven was instantaneous – we work out our stuff here on earth, then all souls go to heaven. No punishment, no holding pattern – just… heaven.

Modern UUs may – or may not believe these ideas. Because of our pluralism of thought and belief, I think that if you talk to a dozen UUs, you’ll probably hear 15 ideas about the afterlife.

Maybe the afterlife is earth, made more real. Maybe it’s where everything exists in all possible states, all at once. Maybe it’s incredibly soft. Maybe it’s nothing at all. Or maybe it’s an incredible, indescribable love that awaits us – a love so overwhelming, even the worst person would find themselves embraced in that utter awe and wonder.

We believe there are probably as many ideas of the afterlife as there are and have been human beings – that we all have our own ideas, which we won’t know are true until we are dead, if we even know.

Here is what I know most Unitarian Universalists hold in common: We see evidence of the afterlife, every single day, amongst each of us. We carry the DNA of our parents, and their parents before them, generation after generation, going back as far as time. WE are their afterlife. And all of our children and niblings, our friends and colleagues, our lovers and companions, our helpers and healers – we are their afterlife too. And when we tell their stories, when we look at their photos, or say that thing they always used to say, or listen to their favorite song, or fill out their name on a form, or see someone who reminds us of them – they are alive. In us.

This is why we do the rituals – wash the body, hold a wake, play the bagpipes, scatter the ashes, cry at the gravesites, gaze at the picture. This is why we build memorials and monuments. This is why we honor the dead.

To give them – and us – a sense of the afterlife.

To complete the story.