I don't believe there's a heaven we can reawaken into after our bodies die. But I do believe in death and rebirth and that there's a heaven waiting for us.
If we give up our lives for the sake of what's right, they will be saved, we will be born again. The heaven we're called to is always in our midst. Right here, right now.*
A friend Nate** gave a sermon on the resurrections we go through during our lives, the death of old ways of being and our birth into new ways of being. An angry father becoming a father with compassion and patience. A self-focused kid becoming a generous friend. Ontological transformations of individuals...and societies.
That's all this takes.
We only need be willing to give up the view we've been born into, that this is the way, this is the only way, this is the ordained way. There's another way.
I had a great talk with my dad today, and I told him that I'm now seeing that there's another future really possible for us, one worth fighting for, and that we're the ones to get us there. It's not the likely future given our trajectory, and it's a bright one, a good one.
I told him I don't know what that future looks like, and he called me on it. Sure you know what it looks like, at least mostly, he said. And he's right.
Clean air, clean water. All people healthy and satisfied. Communities thriving together. Life respected and free. People treating each other as they'd like to be treated.
What if the heaven we've learned about isn't a place, but instead a state of being? What if the arrival time isn't after physical death, but as soon as we're willing?
It just takes a resurrection, and that begins with a willingness to see that this destructive life we live is not the only way.
* Matthew 16:25 and Luke 17:21.
** Here's a source of writings, art, and blog posts by Nate and his friends called the Ecotheo Review, "Enlivening faith and ecological communities through writing, arts, and education."
If we give up our lives for the sake of what's right, they will be saved, we will be born again. The heaven we're called to is always in our midst. Right here, right now.*
A friend Nate** gave a sermon on the resurrections we go through during our lives, the death of old ways of being and our birth into new ways of being. An angry father becoming a father with compassion and patience. A self-focused kid becoming a generous friend. Ontological transformations of individuals...and societies.
That's all this takes.
We only need be willing to give up the view we've been born into, that this is the way, this is the only way, this is the ordained way. There's another way.
I had a great talk with my dad today, and I told him that I'm now seeing that there's another future really possible for us, one worth fighting for, and that we're the ones to get us there. It's not the likely future given our trajectory, and it's a bright one, a good one.
I told him I don't know what that future looks like, and he called me on it. Sure you know what it looks like, at least mostly, he said. And he's right.
Clean air, clean water. All people healthy and satisfied. Communities thriving together. Life respected and free. People treating each other as they'd like to be treated.
What if the heaven we've learned about isn't a place, but instead a state of being? What if the arrival time isn't after physical death, but as soon as we're willing?
It just takes a resurrection, and that begins with a willingness to see that this destructive life we live is not the only way.
* Matthew 16:25 and Luke 17:21.
** Here's a source of writings, art, and blog posts by Nate and his friends called the Ecotheo Review, "Enlivening faith and ecological communities through writing, arts, and education."
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