The Afterlife Ain't What it Used to Be

Brian Wilson died. And for a second, I thought the ocean had gone silent. Beautiful summer day. Then the news hit. Hit me like a ton of bricks. Can't say why. He was eighty-two, after all, and in poor health. It's not like he was gonna live forever. But I guess part of me thought he always would.

Well-wishes from every artist in the entire goddamned world started flowing in, like balm flowing toward a wound it was too late to fix. We were all hurting. Musical genius like that—it was a loss nobody was prepared to deal with. And it's in moments like this where I begin to get really self-reflecting.

I grew up on I Get Around, and Good Vibrations. It was a natural part of my life. They peaked in the sixties. I was born in the nineties. Didn’t matter. There simply wasn't any music anywhere that compared to that. And while Dennis had departed just before I came was born, I couldn't imagine a world without the Beach Boys in it.

Never thought I’d ever hear that Brian Wilson was dead. I never thought that far ahead as a child. And now I realise...what came for Brian comes for us all eventually. So we best be ready to meet it when it arrives.

But when someone's genius touches the entire world, when a man rises above the mental challenges, pulls past the hard punches that life lands on his face—when he grows beyond human to legendary proportions—where does a soul as beautiful as that go? And more importantly than that, do any of us know?

Clue #1 - The Water Returns to the Sea

The thing about death is—most folks treat it like an ambush. A shadow in the alley. A thief in the night.

But the Tao doesn’t flinch.

It doesn’t scream when the lights go out. Doesn’t scramble for certainty or cling to the edge of the bed praying not to slip under. The Tao just shifts. No fear. No fury. It moves like fog, or jazz. You never see the shape it had 'til it's already turned into something else.

“Therefore having and not having arise together.”

-Tao te Ching chapter 2

“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.”

-Attributed to Lao Tzu

That’s the game. Not birth then death. Just movement. Just form becoming formless again. The river doesn’t mourn when it hits the ocean—it remembers. And remembers where it came from.

Maybe Brian knew that in some strange, surf-soaked way. He spent his life chasing the sound of water—trying to catch the shape of something you can never hold. He called it music. The Tao might call it returning.

The Tao doesn’t draw a line between here and the hereafter. That’s a Western thing. A dualistic thing. The Tao just says: you’re part of it. You always were. Even when you thought you were separate. Even when you feared what came next.

“Knowing constancy, the mind is open. With an open mind, you will be openhearted. Being openhearted, you will act royally. Being royal, you will attain the divine.”

-Tao te Ching, chapter 16

Funny, isn't it? All that noise we make about heaven and hell. And meanwhile, the Tao whispers: Just be still. Let go. You’re going home.

Maybe Brian didn’t die. Maybe he just rode that last wave. One final harmony before becoming the silence it came from.

Clue #2 - Playing in Pascal's Casino

Pascal made a bet. Said you should live like God is real—just in case He is.

Believe, and you gain eternal bliss. Don’t believe, and you might get torched. So hedge your bets. Be safe. Take the deal.

It sounds clever. Coldly logical. Clean.
But kid, it’s got more holes than a bootleg prayer.

First, let’s call it what it is: fear theology. A spiritual insurance policy. Fire escape disguised as faith.

It doesn’t ask you to know God. Or love God. Or become anything.
It just says: sign here. Play it safe. Keep the fires of hell off your heels.

But the Tao would laugh at that kind of game. And I’m inclined to agree.

Because what if heaven isn’t a reward for belief—but the natural result of living true?
What if hell isn’t punishment—but alienation? Disconnection? A soul that’s forgotten how to return to itself?

Pascal’s wager assumes a God who can be bought off with a bluff. A poker-faced deity more accountant than Creator. As if the Divine is sitting in a backroom somewhere, counting souls like poker chips.

“Better to believe and be wrong, than disbelieve and be damned. ”That’s the sales pitch.

But it’s not faith.
It’s superstition in a three-piece suit.

And worse—it only works if there's one right answer. One true God. One correct religion. One shot to get it right.

Taoism doesn’t play like that. Neither do most of the mystics. They say truth isn’t a binary. It’s a river, and we’re all wading through it. Sometimes up to our knees. Sometimes sinking. But always moving.

If belief is a game, then God isn’t love. He’s Vegas.

But if the point of life is transformation, not transaction, then Pascal’s wager folds fast.

You can’t bluff your way into eternity. Not when the stakes are your soul.

Clue #3 – Been to Hell, Came Back With a Tan

The thing about noir is—nobody’s afraid of going to hell.

They’re already there.
They don’t fall. They just wake up one morning, feel the sweat on their neck, the weight in their gut, and realise they’ve been falling for years. Gravity just caught up.

Look at Jake Gittes in Chinatown. He thought he could outsmart the system—play knight with a cigarette and a smirk. But he wasn’t falling. He was already sunk in a city rotting from the inside.

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

Not a warning. A eulogy.

Or Walter Huff in Double Indemnity. He didn’t fall when he met Phyllis Nirdlinger. That was just the moment he saw the bottom of the pit he’d already been sliding into—slick with charm, ego, and bad lighting. He thought he was in control. Turns out he was just narrating his own obituary.

And don’t forget Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon. Cynical? Sure. Cold? Maybe. But somewhere in the cracks, he still tries to do the right thing. Not because he believes in justice—but because it’s the only thing standing between him and the dark. And even then, the shadows win more often than not.

That’s noir: not salvation, but survival. Not saints, but sinners trying to crawl back to something human.

Nick Grayson fits right into that world.

He’s not chasing God. He’s chasing truth. And truth doesn’t wear white in this city. It wears lipstick and lies, and it’s always two steps ahead.

If you’ve read his first case—The Truth in the Lies—you know what I mean.

And now, the next case is nearly in the bag.
Pure Evil—that’s what I’m calling it. Because this one’s about rot at the highest levels. The kind you can’t scrub clean. The kind that seeps into everything.

Nick doesn’t fight evil. He walks through it. Not to win. Just to understand.
Because in noir, there’s no heaven waiting at the end of the story. But there might be truth. And that’s enough.

Clue #4 – Heaven is a Place with Bad Wi-Fi

That’s what the Nomad says when a new political crisis lights up the sky—same script, different actors. The righteous come running with hashtags and holy rage. Pitchforks in hand.
Every side’s convinced they’re the good guys.
Every side’s sure the other’s in league with the devil.

He’s seen it before.

Red vs. blue. Right vs. left. Light vs. dark.
Same old story, every time. Only now, it comes in a carousel of 15-second videos and algorithmic firestorms. All heat. No light.

Every new crisis comes with a hashtag and a pitchfork. The Nomad doesn’t buy either.

Not because he’s neutral. That’s the rookie mistake—thinking anyone outside the shouting match is apathetic. The Nomad cares. Deeply. But he doesn’t play with loaded dice.

He knows the pattern:
First, a villain gets crowned.
Then the think pieces roll in like fog over a war zone.
Then the false prophets start selling t-shirts.
And when the smoke clears, the system still hasn’t changed. Just the wallpaper.

He doesn’t run toward the fire because he’s seen what most of it is—smoke machines.
Manufactured outrage. Manufactured saints.
A morality play written by marketers and acted out by people too tired to ask who’s pulling the strings.

He’s not above the fray. He’s beneath it. In the dirt. With the people who get trampled while both sides shout about justice.

Because the Nomad knows: if heaven looks like your team winning, you’re already in hell.

Clue #5 – Rachel Held Evans, Unraveling Faith

She didn’t lose her faith.
She just let it breathe.

In Faith Unraveled, Rachel Held Evans shoulders her questions without abandoning her soul. She doesn’t tear faith down—she opens it up, like a narrow alley turning toward dawn.

In a chapter titled “Nathan the Soldier,” a man who served in Iraq confronts the church’s easy narrative of "us vs them." His words cut deeper than any sermon:

That line felt like a stray bullet to the heart. He didn’t excuse acts of violence—but he refused to dehumanise. He reminded her—and us—that our enemies might be more similar to us than we think. That’s not soft faith. That’s gritty grace.

Then there’s “June the Ten Commandments Lady”—June Griffin, whose evangelical convictions took her on a stone-wheeling tour across Tennessee with a 5,280-pound granite monument in tow. She was famous (or infamous) for carrying the Decalogue like a weapon.

Rachel doesn’t mock her. She sits across the table, listens, tries to understand the machinery of conviction that drives someone like June. And in doing so, she dismantles our binaries: righteous vs. heretic, faithful vs. sinner.

Rachel’s bravery is in the questions she refuses to dodge.

She embraces the tension—faith that holds questions like bones hold tissue.

She reminds us that mystery isn’t a threat. It’s the space sacred enough for faith to breathe.

Why Faith Unraveled resonates with my journey:

• Taoism flowed through Rachel’s willingness to embrace mystery—lost and found in the same breath.

• Noir whispered in her commitment to honesty, even when the truth tastes bitter.

• The Nomad stirred in her refusal to buy manufactured moral warfare.

• She taught that the ending isn’t as important as the becoming.

Sadly, Rachel Held Evans passed unexpectedly, at just 37, from an allergic reaction to medication she’d been prescribed. The rigid will say it was judgment. Punishment for going astray.

But we know better than that.

This wasn’t wrath. It was the way she went to meet God—quietly, suddenly, like a page turning in a book too sacred to finish.

Case Closed – The Final Revelation

If there’s a hell, we’ve already passed through it.
It was the late-night hospital room. The news alert you weren’t ready for. The silence after the record stops spinning.
If there’s a heaven, maybe it’s when we stop pretending we haven’t.

The afterlife isn’t coordinates on a map. It’s not up there, or down below.
It’s a truth we find when we stop bargaining and start listening.
Maybe the worst mistake religion ever made was turning the next world into a threat, instead of a mystery.
A lock, instead of a key.

But mystery has its own gravity.
It pulls like the tide. Like longing. Like the final verse of a song you can almost remember.

Brian’s probably somewhere harmonising with Carl and Dennis—layering vocals that only angels can hear.
Rachel’s scribbling in the margins of eternity, asking her questions with that wry, knowing smile.
And the rest of us?

We’re just trying to make peace with the question mark.

Peace, and Keep Asking the Big Questions,

The Sage Wanderer