Spiritual leaders answer on immortality

• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week’s subject is on poverty. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.

Rebecca DeRoos

Science of Mind practitioner

“And this is what he promised us, even eternal life.” 1 John 2:25

Our bodies have been given to us as treasure to encompass our spiritual souls. As Ernest Holmes says in “This Thing  Called You” every part of your body is made of pure substance. There is a spiritual body which cannot deteriorate. This spiritual body is already within you. Jesus said: “Destroy this body and I will build up another like unto it.” He knew that the spiritual body is indestructible, eternal and perfect. Our challenge is to take care of this temporary body while our soul learns and teaches and absorbs all that it can within this lifetime.

The Baha’is of Kaua‘i

According to the Baha’i teachings, “This composition of atoms, which constitutes the body or mortal element of any created being, is temporary. When the power of attraction, which holds these atoms together, is withdrawn, the body, as such, ceases to exist. With the soul it is different. The soul is not a combination of elements, it is not composed of many atoms, it is of one indivisible substance and therefore eternal. It is entirely out of the order of the physical creation; it is immortal.”

Man has a dual nature: He is both a material and a spiritual being. At conception, man begins to develop his material being (his body) and at the same time his immortal soul comes into being. At the moment of death the physical body disintegrates. The soul, however, continues to progress and develop. No longer affected by the physical body, the immortal soul continues through eternity to draw closer to God.

Wendy Winegar

North Shore Christian Science

I had just finished the race of my life, swimming across San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge, when my daughter’s school in St. Louis, Missouri invited me to give a chapel talk on how I use prayer when swimming. I hopped on a plane and that’s when I met John. I was at the window, he on the aisle, an empty seat in between. Pretty soon we were chatting. The plane landed, we bid adieu, exchanged cards, and went our separate ways.

A few days later I walked into work and my co-worker handed me a stack of pink message slips and said earnestly, “Who’s John?”  Over the next year of dating, sunsets were brighter and the joys in life higher. We got married. Three months later I watched as he was put on a Life Flight helicopter and I never saw him again.

I was saddened down to my toes. I was trying to make sense of it intellectually. That life was immortal, I had no doubt, but knowing that intellectually didn’t lift me out of my grief. A few days later my friend, Earline Shoemake, a Christian Science practitioner, came over to help me get my head back together. 

 Earline talked about Jesus … about his transfiguration (Matthew 17). Jesus took Peter, James and John up a mountain and before their eyes he transfigured into light and they saw him talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah had died many years before, but there they were, talking with Jesus in his century on his turf.

I thought about that for a long time. That Jesus could talk with Moses and Elijah was amazing enough, but that Jesus’ spiritual vision was so great that it overshadowed his disciples’ limited mortal sense of vision so that they, too, could see them, lifted my own understanding into a higher and holier place.  

  Topic for two weeks

from today:

•Will you speak to us on

authority?

• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com

• Deadline each week is Tuesday, by 5 p.m.