I don't know what happens after we die. I've said this before. My faith is not about "heaven insurance" and I don't find much in scripture, certainly nothing Jesus says, that I think gives any kind of actual clear image concerning an afterlife. From a scientific perspective, nothing is created or lost: so my inclination is to believe the same is true of "souls," whatever that may be: and so I tend to think there is some kind of continuance. But I won't try to imagine what that is for you or for me.
That being said, I know what I'd like heaven to be... or afterlife, or whatever you want to call it. While I'm not really a vengeful person, while I don't believe in violence as a solution or revenge scenarios, while I don't even think our retributive justice system with its "punishment" philosophy actually improves anything or makes people "learn their lessons" or even inhibits others from misbehaving, while I cannot accept that "an eye for an eye" is in any way a good idea (and as we know it certainly isn't a Godly one, as Jesus said again and again), there is a part of me that dreams of heaven as a place where people finally see what their actions have done. I want people, especially those in power, to really understand and see at a deep level how self-serving and therefore how dreadfully attacking, unkind and abusive their decisions have been. I want them to see that those they have vilified are in fact their brothers and sisters, people like themselves, who are equally loved, valued and cherished by God. I want them to understand that to be unkind, to restrict access to needed things, good things, life-giving things for anyone is to injure everyone, including themselves. I want everyone to have the eyes of God who loves us all with a ferocity that defies every way in which we see the world. I want us to finally and fully comprehend that denying others a safe place to live, enough to eat, good education and health care, community, connection, compassion - is to be cruel and restrictive to God-self; that to build walls that keep others out is to separate ourselves from God in those other people, and to look with eyes of hate on anyone else is to hate God. I want people to get that when we use and abuse the earth, we are using and abusing our mother, our creator, our core, our ultimate being. And I want people to fully comprehend, from a deep place, that nothing that we have is "ours" - all of it is put in our stewardship to use for the good of all creation. This is what I want. I want this so badly that I lie awake at night envisioning the conversations between God and those who abuse their power and in the process end up killing and destroying people and the earth. I don't want suffering: I imagine a God who is so full of compassion that She/He/They understand exactly why another can't see in this life-time. My God has grace and love even for those who have harmed others. But I do want everyone to see, to know, to have clarity around the choices they've made that have harmed and hurt. That is my idea of "heaven" - a place of ultimate accountability in the sense of facing the vilification of others, the unjust fears that cause us to act without compassion or love in any situation and which continue to cause rifts that divide, destroy and will ultimately end life on this planet in one way or another. I want people to see. And I want it with every atom in my body.
But the other day, my thinking around this moved a bit. I believe deeply that God has given each of us free will. I believe we are called to be in genuine relationship with God, and that means God will not, indeed cannot, control our thinking, control our actions, control what we see or fail to see, what we choose to believe or fail to believe. I believe that God has given us this free will because God wants genuine relationships with us. If our thinking/feeling/understanding is controlled by God, then the relationship is not genuine. Instead we are puppets, controlled and manipulated and played. I don't experience God this way. Instead, I experience a God who really cares about each of us as we are, and who wants to know us as the people we choose to be. I believe that is what the story about Adam and Eve is about: the choice that they made in the story to go against the wishes of God, while not what God desired, was none the less a choice they were given to make. We continue to have the choice of exercising that free will.
It suddenly occurred to me that this is a free will given for all time. God always chooses relationship: that is the nature of God. And that means we always have free will. Therefore, even when the truth is right in front of us (and isn't that the case now?) some people can still choose not to see it, not to embrace it, not to accept it, and not to have it influence them. It doesn't matter if it is in this life or in an afterlife. This remains true. This WILL remain true.
I hate this.
The visions or daydreams I have had about days of reckoning, especially for our leaders, suddenly expanded to hearing their response when faced with truth.
God, "Do you see? These people you are keeping 'out' - they are your brothers and sisters seeking asylum, seeking safety and life for their children. They should be embraced, and helped, and healed."
National leader: "No! They are a threat."
God: "They are not a threat. They work hard, they struggle to survive. They can expand and deepen your life. Just like you (indeed for they ARE you, as we are all one another, all connected), they are simply trying to do the best for their children. They are my children too and I call you to love them as you love yourself. Think of what they go through to try to get here. They don't do this because they are fine where they are. They are doing it to try to live, to try to create a life for their kids that is safe."
NL: "No! I hate them. I don't want them. They are not my brothers and sisters. They are trying to take what is MINE. I do not want them here. They will change my world and I don't want my world changed."
God: "It is not yours. It's all mine, put into your hands to share for the good of all."
NL: "No. I made this happen. This is mine. I worked for this. Or you gave it to me for my own use because I am better. I deserve this. I will not share. I will protect what is mine at whatever cost to anyone else."
God: "Even at the cost to your children and grandchildren? What you are doing is destroying the earth."
NL: "No. It's not my fault and it's not my responsibility."
And so the conversation continued...
Every day I am broken hearted by what I see. Every day I am astounded that anyone could ever think that the separating of children from parents, that the killing of children by neglect and dehydration, that the hatred we send to people of different colors, backgrounds, languages, faith traditions, sexual orientations and places of birth... that we could ever think any of that is somehow okay with God. Every day I weep from what I witness and strive to find a way to walk differently in a world that is increasingly accepting of hate, division and apathy towards others. Each summer I am more and more frightened by the changes I experience in the climate, in our environment, in our world and I struggle to understand why some people continue to bury their heads in the sand and to live in such fear of the truth that they deny it altogether. I want that to change. I am aware that I am not doing enough to make the changes. And yet I do not see the way forward into change. I do not know what I am to do except to continue to speak, to learn as much as I can, and to share both what I know and what I experience, both as a human and as a person of faith.
But this week I have had to give up on my own "revenge fantasies" of people simply seeing truth. I have had to give that up as I've come to realize that those who do not want to see won't. And those unable to self-reflect won't. And those who do not want to own our part in the suffering of the world and our responsibility to help and to heal, will continue to grab what they can for themselves and will not see the bigger picture of our connection to everyone else and our need to care for them as if they were our own, because they are. We belong to one another. If we don't all work together, we will all perish together. But I came to realize at a deeper level that this is the path that we are on...
And my heart aches, and I weep.
I am weary with the efforts, and I have had to let go of much of the hope...
And then, after writing the above, I talked to my eldest daughter. She struggles too. She is my daughter in many senses of the word, and one of those has to do with her level of grief when she loses those she loves, and the depth of her anxiety when she faces change. This, my girl, who struggles in many ways more than I ever have; who is afraid to return to school, afraid to see those places where friends she loved who have now graduated once walked, afraid to step forward into the new - I spoke with her. I shared with her some of my fears and my concerns. And in that place of pain and struggle, she still had the ability to say to me, "No one is beyond redemption. We all learn and see and hear in different ways. Different things cause us to grow and learn and move. But God knows us fully. And God knows what will help us to see. We will all see. All of us. Including you and I: we will see our blind spots too. And we will be shown those with grace and compassion and in the way that we can best hear and see. There is hope. Maybe not in this life, but there is hope."
And so I wept again: this time with gratitude for my girl, for her vision, for her love, for her wisdom. I saw with new eyes. And what I saw was very good.
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