"Is death an event of life? Is death lived through? No, Wittgenstein has said, 'Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.' But what if the answer is Yes, it is an event of life, it is lived through? If it is, as has been assumed in most civilizations but our own, and in our own too before the time of the Black Death, then we face 'the riddle of eternal life,' as I call it here. I see the answer to the riddle in the Gospel of John with its three great metaphors, life and light and love. And I see the meaning of the metaphors in 'deep rhythm,' as I call it here, the deep rhythm of rest in the restlessness of the heart.
"Life and light and love, the three metaphors, form a great circle in the Gospel of John, from and of and towards God, as in the words of the old Bedouin to Lawrence of Arabia, 'The love is from God and of God and towards God.' Eternal life then is the great circle of life and light and love. There is a far point on the circle, though, farthermost from God, and so as Wendell Berry says in a poem, 'Even love must pass through loneliness,' and we could say too, 'Even light must pass through darkness' and 'Even life must pass through death.' And so 'the words of eternal life' in the Gospel speak of life and light and love but also of life passing through death, of light passing through darkness, of love passing through loneliness. So too Christ, embodying the life and the light and the love, passes through death and darkness and loneliness.
"Deep rhythm then, the deep rhythm of eternal life, is a rest in the restlessness of the heart. It is like the poise of a whirling gyroscope. The restlessness of the heart appears in passing through loneliness, through darkness, through death. Rest in restlessness is an acceptance of the restless movement of the heart from image to image, a dwelling in that movement. It is love in the loneliness, light in the darkness, life in the dying. 'Our heart is restless until it rests in you,' Saint Augustine's saying in the beginning of his Confessions, seems to describe this process of passing through loneliness, through darkness, through death, and coming to repose in life and light and love. 'Wisdom is repose in light,' Joseph Joubert says. It is repose in life and light and love, I want to say, and that is the meaning of 'Our heart is restless until it rests in you.' Wisdom is repose in God, and that is rest in the restlessness of the heart, 'at the still point of the turning world.'
"Life and light and love then, and deep rhythm are metaphors of eternal life. Rest in the restlessness of the heart is the meaning of the metaphors. If we take the restlessness of the heart to be the stream of consciousness as it goes from image to image, rest in the restlessness is a relation to the things of life flowing in the stream of consciousness and so is not just part of the flux but is or can be something lasting and enduring. If 'we all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence,' as Dag Hammarskjold says, this rest can describe dwelling in our center of stillness. Can it also describe 'eternal rest,' life after death? I am hoping it can, as if life after death is the same as what is now our inner life."
