Kirkepiscatoid

(Cartoon courtesy of Nature)

Over on Ruth's blog, she got a ton of hits and comments for asking a very simple question...what do you think Heaven will be like? She admitted that she doesn't think of it much, and I have to confess I don't either. I have a tendency myself to think, "Why try to imagine what I can't possibly understand?" But it's clear from the comments there are people who do, and I found their comments interesting. Some are very unique and intriguing. Some seem more or less bound to traditional imagery. Some seem connected to Biblical imagery...or at least some people's interpretations of it based on their religion. One even wondered if it's simply "nothing."

In my own comments, I realized my perception is more of a "presence" than a "thing."

I don't think much about it as a "place". I think the problem is what I call the "Jethro Bodine revelation." There was an episode, decades ago, of the Beverly Hillbillies where Jethro decided he was going to throw himself in the cement pond and drown because these beautiful women didn't pay any attention to him. He then described in vivid detail how these women would suddenly feel sorry for him and hold him and kiss him, etc. Jed just looked at him and basically goes, "But Jethro...you'll be dead!" Since my brain processes "dead" as the cessation of life, movement, thought, etc., I cannot imagine what heaven is like, because I'm being asked to imagine it with an organ that will no longer work following my death!

I just have a sense that it is probably right here, co-existing in a different plane of existence and my senses are too feeble to even comprehend it--just as Boomer and little Eddie smell very real smells in the yard I have no way of knowing what they smell like.

I find myself often wishing we could "smell what they smell." Even the smells you and I don't find attractive. Maybe to dogs, they ARE attractive, and if I could smell them with a dog's nose and brain, my attitude about those smells would be much different? How do I know that what I perceive as the smell of a dead possum is the same smell to a dog? Maybe to a dog, a dead possum smells like Chanel No. 5. Maybe to a dog, the wonderful smell of what I smell when I smell my lilacs, smells as unpleasant as dead possum to a dog.

Same way with heaven. It is possible if I could "smell" it right now, I would not find the "smell" attractive in my human mind. Or that the smell means nothing to me. It does not trigger anything. Smells are powerful triggers in our existence. Perhaps the "smell of Heaven" generally does not trigger anything to us, and maybe only rarely when we are in the right frame of mind, the right state.

I think maybe we get little whiffs of it now and then.

But meanwhile, I have to trust that at the moment of my death, all will be revealed. I have a notion (and from what I understand, this is also a very Jesuit notion) that at the moment we die, it's more or less like a curtain falls and what we felt was so far away was right there all along, and we now have understanding of it.

I have never bought all the "near-death experience" stuff with the lights and the tunnels and whatnot. There is a part of me that says all that "near-death experience" stuff is just our own endorphins kicking in with our own collected memories. A dream, more or less. I realize a lot of people really cling to these experiences as "proof." Honestly, I think they prove nothing except that our endorphins are powerful things. But I do not simply pooh-pooh them. I wonder sometimes if they are actually icons, archetypes, of something much bigger and incomprehensible, and that the only way our brain can deal with them is to create a common archetype or icon to match the commonalities of all human thought. Sort of like how so many people who saw "space aliens" see little hairless gray-green beings with no hair and big dark eyes.

I am not sure it is a "happy place", either. I think people who have experienced tremendous sadness have a desire for it to be happy, and project an expectation upon it. I have a feeling Heaven is neither sad nor happy. As we say in these parts when we go on vacation and people ask how it was, we say, "It was different." I just think "it's different."

I think the reality of Heaven is much more than visions of lights and tunnels, Biblical descriptions, and a desire for it to be a happy place. That's where faith kicks in. Part of faith is learning to trust I am on a "need to know" basis for it. Part of faith is to concern myself with the things I know are "heaven on earth." Part of faith is to try to BECOME a piece of what we cannot understand. That's a tall enough order as it is, and if I devote my time to it, I don't have to worry what Heaven "is" because I will already be connected to it.