Friday, October 16, 2015

Heaven and Hell



Heaven and Hell

 
I recently heard that most people who believe in God or consider themselves spiritual believe there is a heaven, but much fewer of those same people believe in hell.  Im still not sure what I believe in terms of spirituality/religion but as I mentioned a little while ago I am attending a course that introduces me to Christianity.  I figure I cant turn my back on something I know little about nor understand and the course has been fascinating so far. 

I dont think I believed in heaven until Liam died.  So convenient right?  I just could not bear to think that he no longer existed at all and I wanted someone so innocent to be in a better place.  I believed it because I needed to.  Now I believe in an afterlife more firmly and for more solid spiritual reasons rather than sheer desperation.

But what would Heaven be like I wonder?  I dont think it is robed angels with halos sitting on puffy clouds playing harps.  I similarly dont think God is a white-haired man with a staff.  I also dont picture hell as depicted in Dantes Inferno.  I think that if there is an after-life it is likely beyond our imagining, or it could be like the good on earth without the bad or alternately the bad on earth without the good.   I think we catch glimpses of heaven and hell here on earth when we experience joy and despair.  Perhaps Heaven would be like eternal joy and hell would be eternal despair.

Perhaps it is different for each person according to their joy or pain.  When I was in elementary school one of my friends was blind.  She was and is a person full of life and simply differently abled than I am.  I always had fun playing with her and she had such an amazing imagination.  We were in art class once perhaps in second grade or there about and we were supposed to draw a bus.  Now my friend was in the art class as well and asked for the yellow crayon and some others and set about drawing a bus.  I remember thinking, How does she know what a bus looks like?  Well she proceeded to draw, feeling along the lines of her crayon marks as she went.  Her drawing looked nothing like my bus but she drew what she knew of buses from how she perceived them through touch and what I guess she must have been told.  She saw it just as clearly as I did in her own way and it strikes me that her drawing was no less accurate.

The class I am taking impresses me with its approachability.  I dont know that I will end up being a church goer after the course is over, but I will be much more familiar with the Christian concept of God.  Perhaps I will then go on and study Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, who knows.  Just like my friends drawing, other peoples perceptions of God or a higher power are no less accurate just because they are not like my own.

What I have found is that I am thinking much more about spirituality, about being good even when no one is watching, about the complexity of our thoughts and spirits and about why we are all here.  Being in spiritual situations and among other spiritual seekers lifts me up and I rise in my mind like a fledgling.  My wings are still weak and I return to earth quickly but I look up, hopeful.  It will take some time but I hope I learn to stay spiritually aloft and remain to slip between the clouds.

 

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Toys


Toys

 I think back to high school and wonder why I never got in trouble?  I think I had a healthy sense of fear and respect for authority and I seldom questioned things.  But I also was passionate about theatre and I spent so much time rehearsing and studying that there wasn't much time to get in trouble.  Now this is not to say that I was an angel but given my predilection for alcohol, it could have been much worse.
The thing about being passionate about something is that you want to spend your time doing it and it takes you outside yourself.   When you are an addict, being outside yourself is a better place to be.  As they say in the rooms "my best thinking got me here" so wallowing in my own thoughts too much causes me trouble.
This is essentially what the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about in steps ten and twelve.  "Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty resentment and fear.  When these crop up, we ask God (or higher power) at once to remove them. We discuss with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.  Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone help."
A friend of mine recently posted a link to a story from the CBS evening news about a boy named Jaden in Savannah Georgia.  Jaden is six.  His father died when he was four and this year his mother passed away in her sleep unexpectedly.  He now lives with his Aunt and though he was grieving he told his Aunt that he was tired of seeing everyone so sad all the time.  He asked his aunt to buy some toys, little trinkets that you might find in a bubble gum machine.  He then asked to be taken downtown where he proceeded to approach strangers who were not smiling and give them a toy and make them smile.  He has done this numerous times and wants to keep going. His goal is to make 33,000 people smile.
Now this is a six-year-old orphan...  I saw this clip and was bawling, but aside from the fact that he is an example of love and acceptance and giving, he unknowingly found a way to assuage his own grief.  He says in the clip that he is still sad that his mom died, but by turning his thoughts to others he is getting outside himself where he found it too painful to be.
What if we all did that?  What if we all set aside our self-seeking motives as much as we could and looked outward to see where we could make a difference?  Like the beat of a butterfly wing... Such  a small gesture he is making but what a beautiful impact.  What if we could all be a little bit more like Jaden, the little boy giving away toys expecting nothing more than a smile in return.