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Hell Might be the Heaven You Wish For

Imagine that, somewhere in passing, you heard someone say that there would be a new heaven and a new earth, and that there would be no more sea.


"No more sea"!


Would you not wonder why?  Who might possibly imagine everything new, everything better--"a new heaven and a new earth"--and that there would be no more sea?


Does that person own a fishing pole?  Has that person ever, ever tasted a seafood stew?  Eaten sushi?  Ever had a scallop melt on one's tongue, or wondered what it is about clams that make a broth shine?


No more sea?  


It might be someone who was afraid of the sea.  Someone dreading a tsunami.  It surely must be someone whose life was mountains, or desert; sheep, or bison, or searing heat.  No one could imagine a new heaven and a new earth, with no more sea, whose life was the sea.  


It might have been--and it was--a Semite, with sheep and goats, but without a boat.


Heaven is what we think we want.  We have to be careful:  we might get what we wish for. 


A besieged people, surrounded by hostile people, will imagine heaven to be a place where they are safe--a chosen people, perhaps--and for there to be a hell for their tormentors.  Families devastated by wars and disasters will imagine heaven to be a glorious reunion.  My father-in-law, in love with his small place on God's green earth, imagined heaven to be like Lake Mills, Iowa, and even better!  If you know your religious and non-religious friends are good people; if you have a wildflower garden of friends--Asian and Brown and Black and Everything--you will not imagine a better life without them.


If you hurt--especially if your hurt is malicious and enduring--you might say there is a hell.  Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Hell is other people".  


You don't have to believe in heaven and hell.  People used to do that.  Some still do.  But if you do imagine anything better, even if only to say what hurts now, it will not be without a sea, or friends, or a wish.  

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