The Nature of Heaven

One of the most rewarding things I do for a living is teach English as a Second Language to adults part-time. Adults understand the value of education so the feeling in the class of hope determination and gratitude is often palpable. It makes for favorable working conditions no matter how old and crumbling the facility we are in.

One of the lessons I enjoy teaching is a reading lesson that centers around a true story of a four year old girl named Desiree dealing with the recent death of her father. She doesn’t really understand the concept of death so when her father’s birthday rolls around she asks, “How can we send Daddy a birthday card?” her grandmother comes up with astute idea to tie one onto a helium balloon and release it to the heavens. Airmail to the Pearly Gates, as it were.

The girl picks a balloon with a picture of The Little Mermaid on it, they attach her birthday greetings with the request that “Angel Dad” send Desiree something back for her birthday. They let the balloon go with the adults, no doubt, clinging to the desperate hope that a deepening understanding of the situation will somehow dissolve Desiree’s expectations of “return mail” before her next birthday comes around.

What happens? The mermaid balloon, released in California, catches a jet stream and is express mailed to a little lake in Canada four days later and 3000 miles away where an old hunter is hunting ducks. He finds the balloon and takes it home to his wife who buys a present and sends it to Desiree explaining that Desiree’s father wanted the couple to go shopping for him since there are no stores in Heaven. What followed was a heart warming relationship with the couple filled with letters, phone calls and visits that helped tremendously to ease the little girl’s transition into life without a father. The name of the small body of water the balloon landed in? Mermaid Lake.

Some might say it’s too bad there isn’t really a heaven from which the father could correspond. But maybe there is. It’s just that the real Heaven may be subtler that the one described in catechism. I like the Buddhist teaching story that describes hell as a bunch of people at a big table that's groaning with delicious food that no one can eat because the handles on the forks are so long they cannot be used to feed one’s self.

Heaven happens when the people at the table discover that they can use the forks to feed each other. God is not some Dark Lord that taunts us with desires in a world incapable of fulfilling them. She is the intelligence required to understand how common interests are served through selfless action. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says that heaven, contrary to popular belief, “is spread out over the Earth”. We are its exalted or fallen angels depending on our attitudes and behaviors from moment to moment.

So when I receive those meager checks for teaching English to my beloved students, I don’t complain because I know that somehow, perhaps at this very moment, I am getting my reward here in heaven.


See an enlarged version of the above image at www.paulscharffphotography.com/ capebeauty.htm