With Christ, I Die

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
— Colossians 3:3

In the silence,
I close my eyes
and die.

I release
all I love,
all I desire,
all I wanted to do,
all I wished to become,
all that is not resolved.
My hands open one last time.
I release my life.

We breathe our last breaths together,
yours laboured with every breath ever breathed,
mine among them.

I have feared this moment more than any other.
Now, I am here
in the valley of the shadow of death.
You are with me.

We go into death,
your heart beating in mine,
your voice a knowing,
that pulses,
beats,
speaks.

In me, you have always and will always
live and move and have your being.
I will never, never, never
not know who you are.
In a moment,
I will take in my breath
and your soul will come to me
like a needle to a magnet.

I breathe my last
and the illusion
that we were ever separate
vanishes.

From all eternity, God eternally contemplates who you eternally are hidden with Christ in God before the origins of the universe. This is the unborn you that never began, because God never, never, never, never, never has not known who you eternally are, who God eternally contemplates you to be . . .
Mechthilde of Magdeburg says, God says to her, “Do not fear your death for when that moment comes to, I will take in my breath and your soul will come to me like a needle to a magnet.” See? So, when God inhales and takes us, we go back home, like, lesson learned. We’re on this earth to learn to love. That love [is] in God, in death, so the dead aren’t dead. They’re not annihilated; they’re consummated. And they don’t go anywhere, because in God, we live and move and have our being.
—James Finley, Turing to the Mystics, Introductions for the Practice