Touching Heaven
I took my dog for a walk along Te Henga - Bethel's Beach. It's a magical place, a one kilometer stretch of dark sand locked between jutting cliffs of ancient volcanic lava. Caves pierce the rocks and waves surge in from the the wild Tasman Sea. It was just before the shortest day of the year, but the weather was fine and mild.
The tide was low, and the few other walkers were scattered in the distance. I walked on a plain of hard sand, wide and almost flat. The sun shone bright overhead despite its low angle, although it lacked the heat of summer. The waves were large and breaking far out, so that their crash and surge blended to a steady roar.
If I squinted my eyes down to slits, the distant hills and the other walkers and the ocean all vanished. The soothing rumble of the waves was the only sound, and I walked through an infinite expanse of brightness.
This could be heaven, I thought. I could walk like this forever.
One reason for rejecting all known religion, and possibly also a consequence of that rejection, is that I can no longer conceive of any kind of "heaven". What would such a thing be? Certainly not sitting around with a bunch of other religious people talking endlessly about the Glory of God; that would be more like that other place.
Life - existence - is essentially change. People like their routines and they often want things to stay the same forever, but the reality is that without change there is no time. The clock hands move as the spring unwinds; we measure our existence in terms of what has changed in relation to something else. If the clock hands no longer move, if nothing changes relative to something else, there is no time and no meaningful existence as we know it. And physics tells us that the entire universe is a clock spring slowly unwinding. Eventually there will be nothing left to change in this universe.
In a more poetic sense, leaving aside questions of physics, could we exist in some form "forever" and not become bored? Infinity is not a concept we can really grasp. Do we have faith that we will somehow transcend our own limited understanding to a different kind of reality?
Could heaven mean somehow stepping out of time - so that we don't need to do anything, but merely be, walking foerver into the light of infinity?
The tide was low, and the few other walkers were scattered in the distance. I walked on a plain of hard sand, wide and almost flat. The sun shone bright overhead despite its low angle, although it lacked the heat of summer. The waves were large and breaking far out, so that their crash and surge blended to a steady roar.
If I squinted my eyes down to slits, the distant hills and the other walkers and the ocean all vanished. The soothing rumble of the waves was the only sound, and I walked through an infinite expanse of brightness.
This could be heaven, I thought. I could walk like this forever.
One reason for rejecting all known religion, and possibly also a consequence of that rejection, is that I can no longer conceive of any kind of "heaven". What would such a thing be? Certainly not sitting around with a bunch of other religious people talking endlessly about the Glory of God; that would be more like that other place.
Life - existence - is essentially change. People like their routines and they often want things to stay the same forever, but the reality is that without change there is no time. The clock hands move as the spring unwinds; we measure our existence in terms of what has changed in relation to something else. If the clock hands no longer move, if nothing changes relative to something else, there is no time and no meaningful existence as we know it. And physics tells us that the entire universe is a clock spring slowly unwinding. Eventually there will be nothing left to change in this universe.
In a more poetic sense, leaving aside questions of physics, could we exist in some form "forever" and not become bored? Infinity is not a concept we can really grasp. Do we have faith that we will somehow transcend our own limited understanding to a different kind of reality?
Could heaven mean somehow stepping out of time - so that we don't need to do anything, but merely be, walking foerver into the light of infinity?