What Remains?

The poem on the wall in the Chapel of Bones in Évora, Portugal, tells Travelers, “STOP”! So I do. It asks me, where am I going? And why am I in such a hurry? Why am I so focused on my concerns in this world and so little on the next? The walls say, “We bones that are here, for yours we wait.”

The monks who built the chapel in the 1600s weren’t trying to be macabre. Their intention was to remind us that our time on earth is fleeting…and we need think about the eternal. So, I did as instructed. I stopped. And with 5,000 skulls looking down at me, I wondered about them. How did they live? Who were their families and their neighbors? Who did they love? Who loved them? What remains of them besides their bones? Love, I thought. I hoped their love still floats in the air we breathe, and lifts up in the atmosphere and swirls with the stars. Love is the point of it, I thought, under the hollowed eyes of bones.

Before his death, my dad came with me to church several times. A staunch Catholic, he immensely enjoyed Holly and Paula’s sermons. “They are about love,” he said, every time. “Your church is all about love.”

I’m grateful to belong to a church that reminds me each week of why we are here!

Holy one, bless those who have gone before us, and let us remember that love is the point of it.  

Judy B is a member of Peace Church who wholeheartedly agrees with her father!