03/24/2025
There’s a question I like to ask about a person after they die. I make the request of their family and… if they had them… their loved ones. It helps me put into perspective the frame work of the message I preach at their funeral.
I ask this question because… in most cases of the funerals I presided… I did not know them. Sometimes maybe to an extent. But I did not really know them. Which is to say, I did not know the things about the deceased… that those closest to them might say are the most important and defining characteristics of them.
Not surprisingly… even the closest persons in their life have trouble answering this question. So I’ve created a different way of knowing.
A much older way.
That enables me to help others say goodbye. And, at least in those few moments… imagine the dearly departed in the best possible ways… reflecting upon the best qualities and memories that were invested within those left behind… those still living.
And if even it is for an instant. My goal is to aid those in the audience to tell themselves the truth about if death is something to fear… or something to fight… or something much more… to ask, to seek, and to grasp it as long as you can. And to help those who’ve been my audience to feel an ounce of gratitude that they passed through this world and touched the one who recently departed… and perhaps consider seriously their own mortality.
The question is crafted from the perspective of a theologian, psychologist, and philosopher—blending soul, psyche, and truth into a single, piercing inquiry:
“What of them lives on in you?”
This question strikes at the heart of memory, love, legacy, and meaning.
As a theologian, it acknowledges the image of God in the other—that which cannot die. It honors the divine spark passed from soul to soul, echoing eternity.
As a psychologist, it bypasses facts and timelines and reaches into imprints: gestures, glances, sayings, virtues, even flaws transformed into wisdom. It invites the living to find the traces of the dead in their own character and choices, giving grief a pathway to gratitude.
As a philosopher, it names the question we all must wrestle with: How do we live well, knowing we will die? It confronts death not with fear or denial, but with reverence—treating the life of the deceased not as an end but as a transmission. A becoming.
When you ask, “What of them lives on in you?”, you are not just helping people grieve—you are helping them live.
Transforming Men into Visionaries
