Playing off the last chapter of her previous book, The Courage to Grow Old, well-beloved author Barbara Crafton looks at the world around us: what do we know about creation? What gift is there for us in the "also life" of stars and other organic and non-organic forms of existence? How might that shape the way we see our existence and the God who breathed that life into us? And what might life after death be like? BARBARA CAWTHORNE CRAFTON is a popular preacher, retreat leader, and writer who teaches at Marble Collegiate Church and at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Reader's Digest, Episcopal Life, and many other publications. She is the author of many books, including Called, The Courage to Grow Old, The Sewing Room, Living Lent, and many others. She lives in Metuchen, New Jersey. The Alsolife By Barbara Cawthorne Crafton Church Publishing Incorporated Copyright © 2016 Barbara Cawthorne Crafton All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8192-3289-2 Contents Foreword by The Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, Bishop of Rhode Island, Acknowledgments, Introduction, CHAPTER 1 Some of the Stars Are Missing, CHAPTER 2 Freud Discovers the City of Troy, CHAPTER 3 The Kingdom of Heaven IS, CHAPTER 4 The Harrowing of Hell, CHAPTER 5 Memento Mori, CHAPTER 6 But How Will I Know Her?, CHAPTER 7 Unlikely Mystics, CHAPTER 8 The Love of God is Energy, CHAPTER 9 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, CHAPTER 10 The Two Baskets, CHAPTER 1 SOME OF THE STARS ARE MISSING A conversation: Wow. Yes. Impressive, aren't they? Unbelievable. And you haven't seen a fraction of them. How many are there? I don't count them. But you make them. We cause them, might be a better way of saying it. We? How many of you are there? One. But I don't count myself, either. There's no need. It would take forever to count the stars. Waste of time, too, By the time you finished, there would be a whole crop of new ones, and others would be gone, so you'd have to go back to the beginning. Besides, counting things is something only you people do. There's really no need. Really? Somebody said that the numbers come from God and we discover the rest. That was Pythagoras. A little before your time. Did you know that he was the first to teach that the planets orbit the sun? I did know that. Can you see them all? I am them all. The stars are gods? No. They can't be me, but I am them. Wait. ... It's complicated. I can't see you. You don't have to. You are in me. We don't see much in the way of stars in New York — well, we see plenty of celebrities, of course, but I mean stars in the sky. We might see the North Star. We might see Venus, down near the horizon. This summer Venus and Jupiter met and kept company for a while, which caused quite a stir. But mostly there's too much competition. When the entire city lost power in 1987 and again in 2003, the bridges filled each night with New Yorkers, gazing up in wonder at the night sky. Many of them had never seen so many stars. We have substantially more than our share of ambient light here. The stars literally pale by comparison. It is not so in the country. Walking in the dark one Friday night at Holy Cross Monastery, an hour up the Hudson River from the city, I could barely find my way to the guest house from the parking lot. I wondered uneasily if it were true that bears had been seen with increasing frequency thereabouts and if one of them might not at that moment be making his way over to the monastery's garbage cans to enjoy some of the brothers' supper leftovers. But when I happened to glance upward, I stopped in my tracks, forgetting all about the bears: the stars were so bright, the sky so black. And there were so many stars, and they so seemed to lean right out of heaven toward me, as if I could have reached up and plucked one. I stood there for a long time. Finally I managed to tear myself away from that overwhelming beauty and went inside. I wanted to tell somebody what I had seen, but it was late. The house was in silence. I climbed the stairs to my room on the third floor and went to bed. I was still happy about it as sleep found me — there were so many stars, and they were so beautiful. They are far away, the stars. The light emanating from them must travel billions of miles, billions upon billions, before it meets my eye. Even at the speed of light, the journey of a star's light to my eye takes a long, long time. Millions of years. Billions of years. By the time I experience it, it may well have ended its existence. It may have gone on to whatever next act awaits a twinkling star — the red giant phase, perhaps, or the white dwarf. It may be in the process of blowing up. Or it may have done so already, and may now be imploding, shrinking down and down into a dense darkness capable of sucking into itself anything that comes near. Whatever it is doing, it is not doing now what I see it doing now, twinkling in the