When I think about heaven, I am often drawn to images of infinitely expansive creation. I think of pristine beaches stretching on for as far as the horizon (except there is no horizon?), pristine sands meeting clear blue ocean waves which gently lap the shore. I think of forests and mountains, rivers winding their way through ravines and valleys, green as far as the eye can see, rocky peaks jutting out from the green expanse. I think of sand dunes, of stars in the sky; I think of many different things. All my thoughts on heaven share many similarities. They predominantly involve nature (in fact, I believe they all do). This used to seem strange to me, but no longer does. How else am I to visualize heaven but through analogical symbols that I know of from my experience. Also, they all seem to involve infinite magnitude. Not a magnitude of time (I think I’ll blog on that later) or magnitude of space, but instead simply a magnitude of scope, of being. Though I visualize these creational analogies, there is more that I sense other than what the eye can receive. I always seem to ‘sense’ or ‘feel’ ambient warmth, a surrounding presence of comfort and joy. It often makes me think of a description I once heard of heaven as being ‘in love’. Not in the colloquial sense of romantic love or the like; but instead as tangibly being in love, inside of love.
I am convinced that the best way to conceive of heaven is in terms of vita aeterna: eternal life. Okay, I thought I wouldn’t blog about this, but I will. In order to properly appreciate eternal life, it is important to correct a mistaken conception of eternity. Most of us tend to think of eternity in terms of time. That is, our concept/experience of time tends to be our hermeneutic for approaching the concept of eternity. If I asked most people to describe time, (after they’re done looking at me strange) they would likely describe something like a straight line with the past on the left and the future on the right. The present would fall somewhere in between and be constantly moving right towards the future. The future would stretch out indefinitely right (at least until the ‘end of time’, whatever that means to each of us). The same person would also likely conceive of eternity as that endless future after time. Again, it would be a straight line stretching out towards the right, but this time forever. Unfortunately, what is being described here sounds more like ‘endless time’ rather than eternity. This is because temporality is all we know and all we have experienced (well, almost all we have experienced, but I shall save that for another blog post). And like my visualization of heaven, our conception of time must be drawn from analogy to our temporal experience.
I have been thinking about such matters for some time now, and recently came across this in my readings (which I though apt to the topic):
“To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality – this we can only attempt. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time – the before and after – no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy.”
As I read these words I thought, ‘wow, that’s exactly the expression I’ve been searching for’.
If temporal analogies fall short in conceiving of eternity, can we then try to understand time from the framework of eternity? A friend of mine referred to time as the moving face of eternity. This understanding makes a lot of sense to me since… well, maybe I will not get into that either. It is difficult to talk about heaven without talking about time, eternity, being, memory, the relationship between transcendence and imminence (at least in the orthodox Christian understanding) and the list goes on. But I ought to return to the blog topic at hand, if only for the sake of those reading this.
When I think of heaven, I am drawn to images of beaches, forests, deserts, stars and other such things. I think that the magnitude that is expressed in these pictures is rather an expression of the magnitude of being that heaven possesses. Peace, joy, love, these are found in their fullest expression there. How does one imagine infinite joy, infinite peace, and infinite love? Being itself is also found in its fullest expression in heaven. Are we not to stand ‘face to face’ with the source of all being there? How does one imagine infinite being? I think it is right that when I think of heaven I picture beautiful scenes of nature/creation. They may not be the fullest possible expression of heavenly things, but they do express such things when one has the eyes and heart to see them, if only through. Though I must say, that when I think of heaven the overriding sensation is that of warmth, beautiful warmth, bringing healing and wholeness to my soul, to my very being. I call it ‘warmth’; others may call it being ‘in love’.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
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