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. I’m 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 can’t turn my back on something I know
little about nor understand and the course has been fascinating so far.
I don’t 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 don’t think it is robed angels with halos sitting on puffy
clouds playing harps. I similarly don’t think God is a white-haired man with
a staff. I also don’t picture hell as depicted in Dante’s 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 don’t 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 friend’s drawing, other people’s 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.
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