Almost Heaven

“Almost heaven, West Virginia---Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.  Life is old there, older than the trees---Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze.”  These words begin the very well-known 1971 song by John Denver.  I seldom know words to any song, but I know most of the words to this one.  Interestingly it was when Denver was driving his family through Maryland, he was inspired to write this song.  In fact, I read that Denver had never visited West Virginia before he wrote this piece! 

As tempted as I am to devote this whole piece to the song, it is that first couple words I want to give focus---almost heaven.  Since I teach religion and have done a fair amount of funerals and memorials, I am sometimes asked about heaven.  I have been asked by the remaining spouse or children if I think their beloved deceased one has “gone to heaven?”  Of course, it is easy to say yes to this question.  I surely don’t need to quibble at this point.  Clearly, they are not asking for a theological lesson!  Most of the time they want comfort and that I try to offer.

It is not unusual in my classes to have a range of opinions.  Some are pretty sure they will go to heaven or, even, know they are going.  Others scoff at this “nonsense,” as they label it.  More often, there is a big group in the middle.  They are not atheist on the issue of heaven, but they just don’t know.  They don’t know how to think about it.  Even if they grew up in a church context, it is not normally the case that someone has talked very seriously about heaven---except maybe to assume everyone “believes in it.”

Heaven is usually the topic about whether I am going to die and then nothing?  Most of us have enough stake in life and, especially, in “us” that we really don’t want to imagine there is this life and then it is “poof and it’s all over.”  Many of us expect or want more than that.  Somehow we hope that “we” are more important---more special---than a few decades and then poof.  But it is difficult to come up with evidence.

Of course, parts of scripture teach us that we will “go be with God” or some similar way of saying it.  Key to much of our hoping in heaven is that we will retain a sense of “me.”  We expect or want to have an idea that “I will still be experiencing things, i.e. bliss or happiness.  We seem to have a strong instinct to avoid being nothing!  I understand this and am not sure I have much to offer except to quote some of the Christian tradition if folks want assurance that “they” will make it and “they will know it” when they get to heaven.  That may well be how it happens.  If so, I am fine with it.

An alternative way of seeing heaven is less personal and individualistic.  It takes seriously the New Testament teaching that God is love.  I want to perceive this love as a kind of energy---fundamental energy of the universe, if you will.  In this sense God is energy.  God is the energy that created the world and that holds together all that is contained in our universe(s).  I am ok talking about God in metaphorical personal terms, such as Father and Mother.  

We have good hints about what experiencing this energy of the universe that I call God is like.  Many of us have been in nature---at the ocean or mountaintop---when we get the sense that we are actually a part of it.  We feel drawn into nature itself.  We stand in awe, deep in receiving the gift of oneness.  In that moment we lose our sense of self---our personal identity and individuality.  Spiritual writers call this a unitive experience.  We become united---one with the world and the moment.  We might be in this “space” for one minute or thirty.  There is no sense of time in a unitive experience.  

It is only when we “come out of it” that we are aware of having had an experience.  Now I am “me” and talking about that experience.  I become distanced from the experience, but I know it was real.  I am quite willing to believe that unitive experience is what heaven is like.  Let us simply say that heaven may very well be an extended unitive experience.  We become one with God and the universe.  It is so good and blissful, we would never even think about maintaining our own individuality.  In fact, if I am aware of being “me,” I am not in the unitive experience.  I am standing outside of it----may be looking in or sensing something special of which I am not fully a part.

If this is what heaven is like, then it is not solely a post-mortem experience.  We don’t have to be dead to be in heaven!  In heaven described like this, I am confident that I am graced, although I won’t be thinking like “I” am doing anything.  It is so good, I am not worried whether anyone else “gets into heaven, too.”  The deepest form of being loved never worries that love is a commodity and if I get some love, someone else will be short-changed.  

If I am already part of the one loving energy of God, then heaven is here all along.  There is nowhere “to go.”  What remains to be done is become aware of it and allow myself to participate in the open arms of the universe that always want to receive me.  I want to think John Denver meant something like this when he talked about “almost heaven.”  We’re always almost there---in West Virginia or any other place on the planet.