I joined in: “The reincarnation idea is interesting, but it’s strapped with moralistic baggage. As it’s so often depicted, it seems as if there’s a giant Boolean logarithm hanging out there in space: ‘Have you had X experience? If yes, proceed to Question 2. If no, Shazaam! —you’re reincarnated in order to have that experience, like it or not.’ I can’t buy into the existence of some externalized Cosmic Checklist against which I will be measured; the paradigm is subverted by sectarian values.”

Brother Basil then said, “You know, I find all this discussion about being brought back from death interesting, especially in light of our Lord’s raising of Lazarus, a man who had been in the tomb for days and was actually stinking. What must that man have experienced?”

A member of our FOI group offered: “I think recent analysis, especially of the Nazorean portions of the Qumran documents and the Gospel of Thomas (considered by many to reveal the Gnostic roots of what later came to be called Christianity), suggests that we have failed to properly interpret the Hebrew cultural norm of communicating through metaphor. The Nazoreans labeled those who had not yet been ‘born again’ through baptism as ‘dead’; ‘raising from the dead’ was the act of conversion, symbolized through baptism. The apocryphal writings subsumed as gospels under the names of ‘Matthew’, ‘Mark’, and ‘Luke’ do not center on the ‘miracles’ of Jesus, as does the apocryphal material ascribed to ‘John’, which was forced by the continuum from Ireneaus to Athanasius into the ‘four pillars’ of the emerging church – eventually becoming the basis for the Nicene Creed. Therefore, I would feel that chasing after stories like Lazarus would be a fruitless diversion.”

Said Brother Adrian: “Yet this has spawned an industry in ‘faith healing’. Look at the number of people going around making fortunes by slapping people around and shouting incantations. Just go to those folks, get knocked in the head, and you’ll be okay.” “I always liked Ernest Angsley,” I added. “You didn’t have to leave home; just put your forehead against the TV and he would drop-kick you back onto the couch. I assume you’d better have your check in the mail pretty quickly, or the mojo would wear off.” Said Brother Vincentius: “What we’re really talking about here is an ever-present, ever-available, ever-accepting and loving God. Not some anthropomorphized thunderer. It’s our perspective that is off. We talk about spirituality, but we miss it when it’s right in front of us and all around us, now and always.”

A member of our FOI then asked: “Given that you are, at least as I see you now, living in the physical, how do you fill your day?