Kirkepiscatoid

Ok, it is a "Sittin' out in the yard with a fire goin' in the chiminea, laptop in my lap, windin' down and thinkin' 'bout things spiritual," sort of night.

The night rolled in and brought some wonderful pinks and yellows and purples to the dusk. This week in Kirksville, just prior to Truman State Homecoming this weekend, is a "days in the 60's/nights in the 40's" kind of week. It's real NE Missouri fall. The leaves are turning early this year compared to last year--about 3 weeks early, to be exact. In the distance I can hear my neighbor "combine'n beans." A lot of people who farm also have day jobs so they run their combine at night. Not much noise in the way of bugs or critters except for two of the feral cats tussling somewhere out in the pasture. No coyotes, no owls tonight. It's pretty quiet, other than Little Eddie barking a little at the feral cats. Later tonight, I HAVE to pay some bills. Getting your house payment in on time is a good thing. But before I do that, I just want to sit out in my sacred space in the yard and let my brain wander.

You know, one of the things I can never wrap my brain totally around is the concept of Heaven. Truthfully, all the "traditional" images don't cut it for me, it seems, well...boring in a way. The problem with imagining ourselves in Heaven is that we are incapable of imagining ourselves in a different plane of existence. Face it, when we think about it, we still imagine "us"...just in a different locale. That, of course, doesn't cut it. Everything that is "us" as we know it, well DUH, it died!

My stereotypical image just doesn't cut it. I imagine myself in pretty much the body I'm in, hanging out in a different place, and, in a way, at a loss for what to "do" since there is no time. There are no jobs there even close to what I do around here. Here's another hitch--truthfully, part of what makes me "me" in this world is I am always just a little irked about something, and honestly, I like sparring over it! I kind of like mild fussing and grumping and cynicism and mentally sparring with my friends. Well, as best as I can tell, Heaven is a place with none of that stuff...again, making me think, "Wow! That sounds boring!"

How do you understand "happy" without "sad?" How do you understand "content" without "disgruntled?" How do you understand "delight" without "sorrow?" That is the part that boggles my feeble human mind. My soul needs a tiny bit of aggravation to make it spark. How will I be fed in a place that doesn't have any aggravation? Ok, I think I can deal with a place without sorrow, but I'm not sure I care much for a place devoid of little aggravations.

All I can figure out for sure is to use a phrase that Midwesterners and Southerners tend to use when they come home from vacation and are asked how it was. The stock answer is, "I liked it; it was different." All I know for sure about Heaven is "it's gonna be different." I'm gonna be different. Everyone I know is gonna be different. I just can't imagine what that "different" entails because I don't really understand "what I'll be."

Think about it. We handle all these situations on earth because we, for the most part, know ourselves going into it. It's near impossible to imagine a situation not knowing "yourself". This is a place where all the things I know to be absolutely true in this world, well...much of it is gone. No compass. No bearings. No GPS. It's more "wilderness" than I can dare imagine. The only clue I have is when I set out in my personal contemplative prayer time to dare to venture even a hundred yards into the core of emptiness. All I know about THAT is for maybe at most, 60 seconds, I can sense a "bigness" to the universe. Again, I'm not going along with the crowd here. I don't see light, or tunnels, or whatever. I just sense in those moments things are big, and interconnected. Maybe that's why I like my yard at night. Perhaps the bigness of sky above a pasture helps me see the "bigness" of God.

The other problem with me sitting around and cogitating about Heaven is it pushes me to the literal brink of my faith. It brings me closest to that fearful moment when, because I can't imagine Heaven, the little voice that flares up and yells, "maybe all this religion is bullshit, maybe you just die and that's that," tries to take over. This is where my more fundamentalist friends find me incredibly weird and hopeless. They get all "la la happy happy joy joy" talking about Heaven and I am sitting there going, "Uh...I dunno...I'm not even sure if I'm gonna LIKE it."

But I find myself always walking to the edge in this mental exercise, yet eventually, going, "Nah...it's real." Mostly because there have been too many "non-coincidences" in my life, but part of it is, the more I feel that fear of "this is all bullshit" grip me, that same "bigness" seems to slowly take over my demeanor, my breathing, and calms me. What I realize is, in the end, it's all about trust.

Trust is the only assurance I have that Heaven is a real place and that God will take care of the details. Faith is the human emotion that is the outward expression of that trust. Even that trust is a little edgy at times; after all, I am a person who tends to run the other direction when someone says, "Trust me!" But hey, so far, God's never tried to sell me insurance, nor robo-call me, nor put stuff in my inbox that says I may have already won...so it's a mite easier to trust God in that sense.

But when it's all said and done, all I can do is trust that there will be a joyful reality to it like nothing I've ever experienced, even if I have no idea what I'll "be" or what I'll "do" when I get there!