This belief interests me because I imagine heaven as a polyglot Moorish city not unlike Old Jerusalem but by a warm sea: Casablanca in the movie, only sunnier. And I see myself in conversation with those I love under vined trellises in cafes serving crudités, hummus, Tex-Mex, and every liquor of human invention.
∞
Is it worth speculating that heaven may be, for each of us, as we imagine it? Catholics who want none but Catholics there will find none but them -- and no dogs or cats, since the church says creatures without souls can’t get in. Fervent Muslims will find none but Muslims; animal lovers will find every species and breed they care to. Those who want heaven with no bad people will enjoy ample parking and a few weird companions. The heretic nun -- later a saint, I think -- who said she would not go to heaven so long as one soul remained in hell will get her wish, as will those who want no heaven, though surely they will be given glimpses of other people’s heavens and have the chance to change their minds.
Heaven will be full of changes -- or my heaven will. I imagine heaven as calm and safe, yet always different and thus refreshing. (Hell, I assume, is chaos, anxiety, and always the same. Hell is so much like earthly life that it should be easier to believe in than heaven, but I don’t. In this I am typically American; according to polls, eight of ten Americans believe in heaven, two of ten in hell.)
Our chief work in my heaven will be self-education, and the chief means of this education will be observation -- of what is “past, passing, or to come” (Yeats’ words) -- and conversation. One’s first conversations will be, I speculate, with one’s family, including ancestors, and one’s friends; then with past celebrities -- Homer, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed; Plato, Rumi, Shakespeare, Mozart, Spinoza, Lincoln; then with plain people, old and new. And not only people -- one will be able to chat with things: dogs and vegetables, even atoms.
There will be evening classes taught by Keynes, Einstein, Dickinson, Darwin, Goethe, DaVinci, Paul, Aristotle, translated into whatever language the listener prefers. And, of course, art everywhere. Because heaven can be any place and have the virtues of any place else, my beachy city will include London theater, with Shakespeare’s plays in every production from the Globe onward, and amateur theater in bars, lofts, squares, and schools.
The art won’t only be repetitions from life; much will be new. Beethoven will hear his late quartets for the first time and compose others if he wants to. John Keats and Sylvia Plath can write the poems that life denied them. Isadora Duncan, Aeschylus, and Brahms may attempt a collaboration. Hitler will exhibit his miserable paintings. The universe’s entire natural and human history will be on view in small, dusty museums, oases from the mid-day sun, for a few visitors wearing sandals.
Will we work in heaven? In my heaven, yes. And not only at art and sports. How else will the sidewalk cafes and museums run? And the interpreter services and public transit (I look forward to driving a London bus)? Our big work will be learning to live with ourselves and preparing to meet God, if God chooses to meet us. But we may also get involved with life on earth. As a boy I thought people went to heaven during sleep to rehearse their thoughts, acts, and words for the coming day -- which is why we experience déjà-vu. In addition to prepping the living, people in heaven may sometimes help them innovate. Religious folk aren’t the only ones to believe their inspiration comes from outside themselves; many artists and scientists believe this, too. In fact, it may take a large dose of heavenly attention to keep the world going. Who, for example, oversees everything that happens randomly (which is basically everything)? It may be heaven’s apprentice angels.
My heaven will change as my interests change. I will move from that white city by the sea to other parts of the world -- of the universe, in fact, since heaven will be enormously bigger than everything mankind knows. We will be able to live in all places and all (past?) times.
It is important to understand that my heaven isn’t finished and set in stone. It will take eons building, may never be done. Like the heretical nun, I believe that everybody and everything will have to be brought into heaven, reconciled to it, for it to be heaven. And brought in without coercion -- this is heaven, after all. Those who love evil will have to be won over by love, reason, and experience, perhaps in subsequent lives.
Even in heaven, God will be hidden, though we will be able to go back in time to witness occasions when God is said to have appeared. But whether or not we get to see God, having made ourselves ready for this ultimate encounter, each of us will be ready for whatever comes after heaven.
My hunch is that there is eventually a time when individuals decide, like the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, that they are weary of their consciousness and want to give it up. Such people elect either to go into the void of not-being or to return to life, to earth or earth’s approximation, and be reborn into new bodies with only the faintest recollection, if any, of their former selves. If they choose to -- and I suspect many would -- they may come back to life at a lower level of consciousness, as a bird, say, beach grasses, or a tree or stone.
∞
I have had one glimpse of heaven, in a dream that’s occurred several times. It is twilight in a North African city, and I’m on a crowded street, people bobbing by. At the end of the street, deepening sky behind it, is a brown tower. I don’t know where to go and take an uncertain step or two when a man in front of me stops and turns around. He is wearing a business suit, and in one dream is my uncle George, whose death in 1962 first made total death, someone’s extinction, real and hideous to me. He walks towards me and for an instant I am frightened. Then I hear his hearty voice: “Hello! So you’re here!”
In another dream the man greeting me is Jack Fischer, a family friend and extra father who died in 1978. The long-time editor of Harper’s Magazine, Jack, I realize, will tell me the latest political news, where to swim and play tennis, and the best local beer.
Since the death of Cory Dennis, my son’s best friend, in 1984, when both boys were ten, I have come to think that the person greeting me may be Cory, still a boy, his chubby face out of place in his dark burnoose. “Mr. Stott,” his voice quavers because he is still shy addressing an adult, even a newcomer. “Mr. Stott.”
“Cory!” I say, and I jump forward to hug him. I am comforted by how substantial he feels in the thick garment.
Now I have my hands on his shoulders, trying to catch his shifting eyes. “Cory, are you here to welcome me?”
He looks up with a mischievous grin and nods. “I was chosen,” he says.
“I’m so glad! Now I won’t be frightened.”
“Oh, no-o-o,” he says, making the last word linger in the air, as was his wont. “This is home.”
