On Heaven as in Earth Part II

I met Larissa Gardener the other day and the memory of my great transition came rushing back. She, of course, remembered nothing of our conversation in the church the day I died. I thought for my own sake I might try to describe it all as if writing to my beforelife self. (I vaguely recall using the term afterlife, so when I think of my life before this I’m just going to say beforelife). It’s like meeting Larissa again reminded me that there was something before this.

After leaving the church and entering the old growth forest I was led to a tree. It was overwhelming to encounter that tree, as if I was really seeing a tree for the first time. I remember that it was a maple, and every groove in the bark appeared to me like canyons. I could see deep into the channels and maybe even beyond them to the very threads of life in the tree. The flecks of moss and surface of the lichen were expansive green fields with fabulous emerald hills. So I stood there touching the tree and allowing myself to be overcome by its complexity.

“You’re tired.” Said the person, woman or man I still did not know, and they put a hand on my shoulder.

“No.” I said. “I’m more awake than I have ever been in my whole life.” But even as I was speaking I sank to the ground with my back against the tree. I was in a state of the most profound comfort, and the carpet of leaves underneath me was like a mattress, and the tree behind my back like a trusted friend.

I nodded off ever so briefly so that my head popped back up as soon as my chin touched my chest. It was disorienting. The forest now had many people leaning against trees just as I was. How they got there in the time it took for me to nod off I cannot say.

I recognized some of them. Not far from me, maybe only 10 feet away leaning on a birch tree, was my mother-in-law. She was only in her 60s when I died, but now she had to be well into her 80s. I studied her when I realized that this wasn’t my mother-in-law. This was Sarah, my wife. What was she doing here and how did she get to be so old?

Next to her were other elderly people. They looked dimly like our children; something about the eyes. Friends, family members (is that old lady my sister? No, it can’t be), were scattered about. I’ve almost forgotten until how time wears down the earth suits. There were a few who looked like they did the day I left them. Early deaths? Questions like these hold so little interest for me now.

I wish I could say that the history I shared with my family and friends caused me to rush straight to them, to embrace them and burst into tears. But this was not the case. There was beauty in those relationships for certain, but it all paled against the allure of everything around me. People were wildly stunning in their breathtaking uniqueness. I loved them all, even the ones I didn’t know. I was attracted to them. Drawn to their beauty without any desire to own them. It was an appreciative attraction, not a self-seeking one.

It’s hard to describe the change I was experiencing but it was something like how I remember feeling relieved. I didn’t realize the constant anguish my body and emotions had endured in the beforelife. Like sitting down for the first time after a long and exhausting day. I simply wanted to take in how wonderful it felt to be without burdens.

Something drew me from our restful state. Was it a horn? It was an instrument I’m almost sure. We all stood slowly, brushing the dirt and leaves from us, and we walked out from the forest.

I wish I could write down what happened next, but words fall short. It was too wonderful and too terrible for any language I know. It was like standing at the foot of an erupting volcano and watching the glowing lava creep toward me, unable to move. The terror of it beggars description.

“Oh my God, oh my God.” I could hear myself saying this over and over, and I meant it.

How I might have imagined it in my beforelife might be like being buried alive by burning lava. It hurt like nothing I could have conceived, but oh the freedom of having the shell imprisoning my soul burned away. Then it was like becoming part of the lava. It seeped into my pours until everyone and everything became a single molten organism.

I’m laughing as I write this. Such a pitiful way to describe those moments. Time had lost all its meaning so I can’t even talk about it in terms of days or months or years or milliseconds. Nor can I describe people in the way I used to know them. Individualism melted away while individuality become more pronounced. Ah, there, you see. Words will not do. Not English, nor any other earthly language nor even the dialectic of angels.

And what of God? There again, language doesn’t exist to describe to my beforelife self what it was like to encounter God. I faintly remember what it was like to smell bread baking. Encountering God was a little like how that smell made me feel. But no, that’s not it. You see, even the transcendence of that smell doesn’t come close, thought it might have set me in my beforelife on the right road and pointed me in roughly the right direction. I’d just need to go as far as I could on that path, and I might eventually come to the very outer edge of a description. But only if I could walk along it for several lifetimes.

I will say that all of my most glorious or powerful conceptions of God fell woefully short when the limitations of my feeble imagination fell away. In both quality and quantity. To think of God in the beforelife would be like trying to swallow the universe. Until you leave the confinement of your earth suit and have the hard outer shell of your soul burned off, I could never have come close to knowing what it is like to touch God. I’ll just have to leave it there.

But what I might have been able to grasp, if only in shadow form, is what heaven is like.