Heaven

  I sat on a pew one day. I was at the launch of a book of letters that my friend's mother in law had translated and put together. It was following the story of a Mennonite family that had escaped the brutality that was happening in Russia not all that long ago. A bit of the story was told to a church filled with many people. There was a mixed crowd there but I saw many white heads. At the end of it all the author had someone play a hymn. It was haunting and beautiful and as it was being played suddenly I felt something I have only felt a couple of times. It was like everyone's spirits lifted up and joined hands. As the music kept playing people started to weep and no one could sing but everyone started humming in beautiful harmony. So many people in that room had lived that story. It was part of their family history and they all took a moment to feel something that was centered deeply, so deeply, in their souls. I sat there overcome. I felt such a moment of harmony and collective spirit. To lift voices together in grief, for everyone to feel so deeply as one in that moment was so transformative. Maybe there is a time in your life you have felt that? Maybe you forgot about it and this has helped you remember.

I just wonder if one day Heaven will be like that.

 We are often lonely here. So many people go through such hard tragic things and they have to keep going. They might be able to grieve, to wail, to stop for a while but nothing around them stops and so then they have to keep on. Do we really realize how many people have traveled the same road?
I forget, I tell myself it isn't true, I tell myself that it is just me. It is not.

 In that church, on that pew, I felt for a moment what it would be like if people were able to be united in vulnerability, in truth, in their feelings. It is the most impacting most profound feeling. In Heaven I think the pain of this World will be cleansed away but the beauty that pain produced will be shining in a way we didn't realize it could. I think we will be able to feel what I only got a glimpse of during that moment when the hymn was being played.

  I experienced this feeling one other time with the same amount of clarity. I was at a gathering of Youth With a Mission Leaders from all over the world. At the beginning of the meeting a First Nations Elder stood up and prayed in his First Language. After he prayed a hush fell and some of my First Nations friends came out the front of the room. They were wearing the garments of their ancestors and they started to dance. This was the first time in their lives they had ever been able to dance the dances of their ancestors in front of people who believed in God and not feel judged or wrong. They were celebrating the culture that God had given them. They were drumming and singing and once again something happened that was far deeper than anything physical and once again tears started to fall. No one could help it. There was such power in what they were doing, such a deep healing in their expression of beauty and power. I cry as I write because the healing and peace that was in that room, the exaltation and joy as well, the triumph of the acceptance as well. It was good.

  When I go into the mountains, when I look around me at Creation I can see it too. Everything works in harmony. In my favorite meadow there is a massive tree trunk standing tall and it is dead. Out of it is growing two totally different trees. They are already stately and their roots are intertwined in the trunk. I see how everything works together in unity to create this sort of beauty that is not really describable but it so deeply healing when you take the time to take part in it. 

There is power in unity of spirit. It changes the world and it creates a kind of beauty that is the truest kind.