MARCH 31
They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they
live in one another still.
—WILLIAM PENNThis analogy of friends being separated by the breadth of
the sea and yet living in one another strikes us as apt—and
hopeful—as we consider the mystery of death.
After all, was our love ever dependent on the immediate
physical world around us? Were we not somehow “in touch”
with one another even though we might be a thousand miles
apart.
To be sure, the death of the physical body is entirely dif-
ferent from being somewhere on the other side of the world!
We cannot minimize the wrenching deprivation we experi-
ence when our loved one dies. But in the ways in which our
love was “beyond the world”—not dependent on a particular
place or time or set of circumstances—surely that love per-
sists, wherever we are, whatever the circumstances of our
life now.
As I cherish my friends who are far away, I hold in my heart the
memory of my loved one.