Hope in Grief: Love Never Ends

Part of my job as a pastor is to walk people through the deaths of their loved ones. My work provides a front seat to people’s painful experiences of loss and grief. I am grateful I get to do this work. It is a holy privilege to be with a person as they say goodbye to someone who occupies their heart. I am part of intimate conversations of love and sickness, trauma and death, loneliness and grief. Eventually, a mourner’s healing comes, but it cannot be rushed. Grief has its own life cycle and always takes more time than we would like. 

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During these conversations, I don’t try to fix people, cheer people up, or make their pain disappear. All that will come, but not from me. My job is to listen, to affirm the natural cycle of human events and their accompanying emotions, and to bear witness to a life lost – a life missed and mourned. 

But deep in my heart during these conversations, more resides. This is the wisdom I have learned through my own love and loss. People won’t be ready to hear this right away, because it would sound like my impatience with grief. So I don’t rush them, but I think to myself what I learned, and what so many others learn, a few months or few years after a time of great loss. 

THE EXISTENCE OF AN IMMORTAL SOUL 

Spiritual systems from the beginning of time have described the human soul, a portion of each of us that consists of pure energy. Hindus understand the soul, Atman, to be a steady, stable entity. Buddhists describe the Buddha-nature as less of a static noun, and more like an ever-changing verb, based on a trajectory of its karmic record. Jews describe the soul as a living, breathing, conscious body, and many believe that each soul will return to the God from which we came. Christians and Muslims describe the soul in detail and explain its continued existence in Heaven or Paradise. Some Native American tribes believe that the soul of a person travels along the Milky Way. Universally, people have described that energetic part of us that is not destroyed, ever. 

Energy doesn’t stop existing. Even scientists tell us in the first law of thermodynamics that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form. 

DEATH IS NOT AS POWERFUL AS IT WOULD SEEM 

With few exceptions, people are afraid of death. In our country, we fight death with all we’ve got. We lie about our age, purchase wrinkle creams and hair color, and keep gym memberships to maintain that idealized 25 year old body. Our movies, music, and fashion praise youth culture. We put the elderly and the sick in homes and hospitals, out of public view. 

Philosophers have pondered the force of death as much as they have pondered the meaning of life. The booming funeral industry embalms bodies to give the appearance of a youthful glow, and buries bodies in caskets designed to preserve the flesh for decades to come. We would stall death forever if we could. It robs us of our homes, possessions, wealth, breath, and heartbeat. It seems the cruelest fate there is. 

And yet, spiritual traditions the world over demonstrate the anemic force of this thing we fear the most. Hindus tell us we will all reincarnate, so death doesn’t really get us after all. Buddhism reminds us of the day the Buddha became enlightened. Mara, the god of death, tried to frighten him from the spot under the Bodhi Tree. He would not be moved, so Mara and his hosts fled, leaving the Buddha there to gain peace at last. Christianity tells a powerful and timeless truth of death and sin wanting to have the last word as Jesus was murdered upon a cross. Though Jesus felt the utter despair of that day, and went through all that death could deal, he then rose from the dead, and thereby conquered sin and death. We all learned that day that there was a power much stronger than the force of death, the power of love. 

THE POWER WE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND

We once thought love was a really nice idea. We once believed love was merely affection. “I love you” means “I feel close to you” or “I respect you.” We still forget the tremendous power of love. Love is what allows a mother to lift a 3,000 lb car off her child who is trapped underneath, a phenomenon known as “hysterical strength”. Love is what inspired Mahatma Gandhi to lead a nonviolent revolution that won India independence from Great Britain. Love is what led Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to work and pray for an end to South African apartheid. Love is what led Mother Teresa to pick up countless ill and impoverished people off the streets of Calcutta. Love has world-changing power to bring about improbable, even impossible, results.

To speak of love is not just to speak of a warm feeling. To speak of love is akin to speaking of fire. This is a tremendous power that can accomplish the best of all we would hope for, including a literal end to death. Death does not have the upper hand. Death is no longer the threat we used to believe it was. Love has won. Love will always win. 

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF LOVE 

Love is phenomenally powerful. Love is also, like the soul, eternal. This is one of the most important tenets of my religion, Christianity. The Christian Bible says “Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8).  It goes on to list lots of things that will end: prophesies, tongues (the ways we speak to one another), and even knowledge. These things all shift and change with time. Even 100 years from now, these things will have highly morphed. Even more change will come to those things we care so much about now: who wins the Superbowl, who gets awarded at the Oscars, fads, fashions, news, technology, etc. Love, however, is strong enough to last, not just for a decade or a century, but forever. Love is never-ending. Just like the soul, love cannot disappear. 

YOUR LOVED ONES ARE WITH YOU 

Your loved ones and mine have not ceased to exist. Their physical bodies have worn out, as was the goal of their inherent design. Their energy, however, their soul, still exists. In addition, the love they have for you has not ceased to exist. Their love is eternal. Can I prove any of this? Not at all. I do, however, believe it with everything in me. 

It all began when I stopped strongly grieving the loss of my father, and then my mother, and started experiencing them. They came in signs, they spoke in meditations, and I felt them present. I felt them in the way I felt them when they were physically with me. They communicated in patterns and signs too complex to be coincidental, and the more I opened up to the possibility that they were with me, the more frequent and obvious the experiences of closeness became. Could I be delusional? Of course. Do I think I am? No, not at all. My parishioners and friends who have had similar experiences relate with me on this. It seems that neither the soul, nor love, has “left.” I am a mother and, were it possible, I also would travel the ends of the universe in spirit to be with my children. That is what love does, and frankly, that seems easier than lifting a car. 

When you are grieving, I won’t tell you any of this. I will cry with you, mourn with you, tell you how very sorry I am for your loss, and mean all of it. I know that raw and devastating pain of the loss of someone to death. I will never rush you through it. 

But I will also hold vigil and wait for the day when you will see another side to things. Your relationship with your loved one will change, but not disappear. It will look different, be different, feel different. But their immortal soul and their eternal love will be right there by your side, and I am confident that, in time, you will sense that for yourself. Death can take some things away, but not everything – not the energy of a person, and not love. Love never ends, love never fails, and love always wins. 

STEPHANIE LAPE

Stephanie Lape is a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
She holds a Master of Arts degree in Transpersonal Psychology (the psychology of religious experience) from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and a Master of Divinity degree from Luther Seminary. A long-time professor of comparative religions and former campus minister, she now serves as pastor at Eden Lutheran Church in Riverside, California.

Stephanie speaks and teaches on matters of spiritual and psychological development, biblical studies, the enneagram personality tool, and comparative religions. She is an active advocate for interfaith and ecumenical studies. She has taught classes on major religious movements in churches, schools, and city programs, while also leading tours and guest speaking at mosques, synagogues, and temples. Stephanie is honored to be a speaker at the 2021 and 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions.

She also loves to write. Stephanie is a contributing author for Living Lutheran Magazine and author of Beckoned: Hearing God’s Call to Deeper Faith, which is both a travelogue of her own winding spiritual journey, as well as a guide to help people discover their own path. She lives with her husband and two children in Southern California. 

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