In Heaven

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last --
I'm going, all along.

--Emily Dickenson

I teach a high school journalism class and, as my students learn (even if they learn nothing else), the most important questions are the most basic questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. So maybe we should start with What is Heaven? Where is Heaven? When is Heaven? Why is Heaven? How is Heaven? Maybe not. Some questions just don't have answers that we can get to. Some questions are best left for the monastics who might be getting bored after counting the number of angels on the head of a pin. Maybe I am just copping out because I cannot even begin to answer these questions.

Or maybe it is that I agree, at least a bit, with Miss Emily's take on Heaven. I am not saying that Heaven is not a place, that there are no pearly gates or streets of gold. I would never suggest that Heaven is or is not any particular thing. I know what little I know, and that's about it. However, I think that Dickenson might be onto something about the nature of Heaven.
Emily Dickenson suggests, in the coda of her poem, that Heaven can be found in Nature, if we are willing to take the time to notice. I would suggest that we can take that idea one step further, that Heaven can be found anyplace.

God is omnipresent; He is everywhere. God, we also know, is in Heaven. If God is everywhere and God is in Heaven, then is Heaven wherever He is--like the President and Air Force One? Air Force One is the designation of whatever plane the President is passenger on. Does whatever space God inhabits, then, become Heaven? Is everyplace Heaven? I don't think we can go that far, but we can at least move down that path.

When I was younger, my mother told me something that has stayed with me for these many years. She said, "Remember, wherever you go, you are taking God there with you." On one level, this is a very comforting message: wherever I go, God will be there for me. On another level, the one I suspect my mom was suggesting back in my high-school days, this message is a kind of warning: don't go into places that you would not be comfortable taking God into. Whichever reading of this we choose, we still have the idea that God is there. And if God is there, wouldn't there also be a piece of Heaven?

So, if everywhere that God is is Heaven--everywhere--then the job becomes to find the Heaven in whatever place we find ourselves in. Or, to approach this from another perspective, is the God we are praying to distant, or is He with us? Are we praying to God who is beyond the Primum Mobile of the Ptolemaic Universe, someplace beyond the reaches of the stars, or are we praying to God who holds us in His loving embrace and so must be right here where we are? Is God both inside and outside Heaven? Of course, He could be, but why would He be? As Emily Dickenson suggests, the Heaven we experience here is not the final destination, but it is a "getting there."

In the scene Miss Dickenson paints for us, hints of Heaven are evident. We can easily find Heaven in an orchard with birds singing, bees buzzing, sunlight warming our cheeks as a gentle breeze plays across our face. We can think of Heaven as we watch waves roll onto a stretch of beach, as we listen to the quiet of a wood filling up with snow, as we marvel at the multitude of colors on a single tree in October. We may easily believe we are witnessing something of Heaven when we are privy to a baby's laughter or when we receive a smile from a friend, when we get a good snuggle with our kids or when we laugh long and hard and deeply with people we care about. Heaven is easy to imagine in a sunset or in a field of thistle and Queen Anne's lace or in a star-filled sky.

Oddly (or not), finding the Heaven in adverse conditions is not that far removed from these idyllic scenes. Like the little girl in the red dress in Schindler's List, the glimmers of Heaven stand out in bad situations. Like a crocus peeking out of a snow drift or a ray of sun shining through the clouds on a rainy day, glimpses of Heaven in bad times, in bad places shine forth in ways that grab our attention. It is Heaven in the mundane that we have trouble seeing.

While we cannot help but see Heaven in certain wonders of our lives, and we search desperately for signs of Heaven in the dark places we experience occasionally, it is in the everyday, in the common, in the part of our existence we inhabit most of the time that we usually don't see Heaven. Perhaps this is because we tune everything out in our normal day-to-day. Perhaps it is because we take so much of our lives for granted. Maybe we just don't pay attention.

If Heaven is anywhere God is (which is just one way of looking at things), and if God is everywhere (which is accepted generally as true), then our finding glimmers of Heaven in our everyday life is akin to finding God in our lives. Like the Puritans in search of signs of grace, we also should be looking for signs of Heaven. We may find them in Nature, as Emily Dickinson did. We may find them in one another, or we may find them within ourselves. Wherever we find them, we have to remember that they are there because God is there.

Dickinson says that instead of getting to Heaven at last, she is going all along. Heaven is a journey, it is our relationship with God. In that case, these glimmers of Heaven in our lives are not so much the destination--we are not going to stop along the way and not continue with our journey; these Heaven sightings are signposts, reminders of which way we should be going and that we need to stay on the path.