Going with St. Macrina’s point about the soul still being connected with the physical atoms that used to be constituted in a body, I’ll post a quote from The Land of Unlikeness, Bulgakov Blog Conference Day 2.

Here is Bulgakov’s key point, the Eucharistic and Baptismal elements, Christ’s blood and water are poured out on the cross and remain in the world. Bulgakov insists that this outpouring of Christ’s wound on the cross indelibly alters the fabric of the world, binding it forever to Christ, sanctifying it and preparing it for its final transfiguration at the parousia. For Bulgakov the very metabolism of the world, its cosmological fabric is transmuted by the flowing forth of Christ’s water and blood into it. There is a real sense for Bulgakov that Christ’s own human substance remains diffused into the world through his self-oblation. The world, in Christ’s outpouring is “Christified”, permanently bound to Christ, united with him and impelled on by this union towards its eschatological transfiguration by the Spirit. Indeed, for Bulgakov it is the fact of Christ’s blood and water pouring into the heart of the world that even makes it possible for the earth to sustain, to bear the Pentecostal coming of the Spirit whose eschatological epiphany is recounted in radically apocalyptic terms. The biblical images of the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood in the day of the Lord (cf. Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:17-31) are the manifestation of this pneumatological intensity, which the world can only endure on the basis of its Christic reconstitution through being transfigured into the Holy Grail. (see TThe Bride of the Lamb, pp. 419-421)

See George’s comment about others who talk about the fate of a person’s atoms.

This is the continuation of my current series about the departed, inspired by my strong desire and quest for my stillborn son, Isaac. Of course this is all bound up in Christ’s salvific work, which I hope is implied in what I write. I have been criticized before by people hostile to Orthodoxy who claim I do not focus on Christ enough, and of course that is true, but unworthy me seems to look further down the effects chain and articulate that instead. Practically and sensorily, these “effects” capture my attention. Plato would say that there is diminishment in a supposed distance from the source. Sort of like how the gossip game, (or telephone game) demonstrates that the further you get from the source, the more distortion of the original can occur. We can see this in the fallen world of decay. But if Christ is everywhere and fills all things through the Holy Spirit and the will of the Father, then redemption, restoration to the original, is closer to us than a brother. He desires and accomplished union with all of creation. We look at our fallen world where imperfections and death are ubiquitous and wonder how effective the Incarnation which joined our perfect, source-of-life God to creation, was. But somehow it was and is perfectly effective if we can tune into it. And I sense that Bulgakov was onto something.