Another perfect day in paradise # 2,374

"Seeing the world the way God sees it." That's the first thought that occurred to me when I woke from my afternoon nap today. These thoughts followed:

I don't have an image in my mind of what God looks like but, if I did have an image of God in human form, it would not be an old man with a long beard as Jehovah is often depicted. My God in human form would be a child playing with his creation the way a child makes sand castles on the beach; a golden child playing with golden sand in golden sunlight. But I don't have an anthropomorphic idea of God. That's just a poetical concept.

Matthew wrote that Jesus said: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

Dorothy Sayers (the British writer of the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels and a devout Christian) said that "Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of God" means that unless "you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five" you will not experience heaven. (She added: "One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.")

Luke wrote of Jesus' explanation of heaven: "And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

I may be mistaken but the way I understand Matthew and Luke (and Sayers) is that heaven is a state of mind. (Maybe "mind" is not the right word. Perhaps it's a state of soul or heart.) And that state of mind must be like a child's in order to experience heaven. And, to see the world like a child, one's mind must be as clear and empty as the sky with not a worry in the world.

I don't know if there is a heaven or a hell after death but I've experienced both right here in this world.

No human can completely capture either the beauty or the horror of this creation. I've tried painting, music and writing and have always had to give up and say: "I can't do it."

Some great artists have almost succeeded. There are paintings and music which come as close to "seeing the world the way God sees it" as humanly possible. I had to give up painting because the materials were too expensive for me when I was a kid. I gave up music when I moved to Britain and left my piano behind in South Africa. I tried to keep up writing (because a piece of paper and a pencil could be always kept handy) but, the more I read, the more I realized that it had all been said before and better than anything I could do. The Bible, the Baghavad Gita, Shakespeare and hundreds of other writers have said everything there is to be said about God and his creation so I eventually gave up trying to do "creative writing."

Today was the first time in weeks that I've had time to take a nap. I've noticed something about the dreams that I have during a nap. They are different from the dreams that I have at night. They are brighter, lighter and sunnier. My night dreams, no matter how comical or cheerful, seem deeper, darker and more serious when compared with my afternoon nap dreams.

Today I dreamed that I was in a seaside village not unlike the one that I grew up in. (In my childhood village, the sea was always present even if you were not at the beach. You constantly caught glimpses of it glinting through trees or between houses.) My dream was like that. The sky was vast and clear, the sea sparkled in the sunshine and kids played and ran and laughed on the beach.

I was not in the dream until the very end. It was more like watching a movie. There was a story unfolding - something about the mischievous local kids making fun of the tourists who poured into our village at every holiday - but the story was not that important. The atmosphere was. The kids were bubbling with bliss. (I think of champagne when you pop the cork.)

It was heaven on earth but the heavenly aspect was not the beauty of the kids, the earth, the sea or the sky. It was the feeling; what was in my heart as I watched. As I awoke from my nap, the dream ended with me lying in a deck-chair on the beach with the ocean stretching away to the horizon which seemed close enough to touch. My mind was as clear and empty as the sky. I reluctantly dragged myself away from such bliss and awoke.

Heaven to me is that emptiness and clarity of mind; not a worry in the world. There is no thought of the past or future, no time, only now; no clouds, only the clear light of reality which is infinite and eternal.

I took the dogs for a walk and of course the cat and the chickens all had to come for a walk too. I had to laugh out loud because I felt like a cartoon version of Saint Francis with the dogs romping around me in circles, the cat trying to trip me up by rubbing herself against my legs and the chickens clucking and flapping and running to catch flies or stopping to scratch in the soil.

Words are inadequate to describe my dream so I tried to find a picture which would capture it but none of the pictures grabbed me. (I wish I could photograph my dreams.) This painting by William Charles Perry was my favorite picture of kids at the beach but the colors are not bright enough; the sky is not blue enough or vast enough; the sea doesn't sparkle enough and the kids' little legs are not dancing with joy on the golden sand while the waves glint like diamonds in the sunshine.

So I looked at my childhood photos. Here are three pics from my childhood (two with my sister - if they had been in color perhaps they would have captured my dream.) I decided to add the last one (of an old bald me and my beloved sea) to bring me back down to earth.

And the music which suits all this best is Claude Debussy's "Sacred and Profane Dances" or Maurice Ravel's "Introduction and Allegro."