21 October

Rest In Peace. Everyday wonders - the origins of that phrase is one of them, I think. For the earliest Christians it was actually dormit in pace - to ‘sleep in peace’. Why is this an everyday wonder? I think I posted about this a bit before, notice the reference to sleep there. There are still religions who argue over whether this phrase is disrespectful, and it’s created confusion over the centuries - what could it mean? Why ‘rest’ or ‘sleep’ - no mention of the soul? I think the wonder here is that the early meaning might be one we’ve forgotten, and it’s amazing. Because we’re so used to saying death is the opposite of life, we see death as the end of life. But life isn’t like that, life is either actual - the stuff you do every day in collaboration with other people and things - or potential - all the things you could do, but don’t. The potential side of you is eternal, it lives forever. You, and your life, are a tiny subset of that eternal sea of potentials, like a car you make out of a giant box of LEGO bricks, but you could also have built a train, plane, house, or whatever. When you sleep, you re-enter this potential state. Eternity. It’s what dreams are, it’s why in your dreams you can do pretty much anything. Dreams aren’t movies playing in our heads, they’re us actually living that potential state. But we have to rest or sleep to do it. And really that’s what death may be, just returning to that dream state, and living it without ‘waking’, which is just having to collaborate with others.