I do so know the feeling of being a stranger, a foreigner on the Earth, in existence itself. This longing for something better haunts us, this thing that we can imagine but not quite inhabit, and which falls apart if we try to nail it down too concretely.
We long for eternity, of course, but we do not know what it would be like; we know it only by negation. We feel our limits, and we sort of hate the losses we have felt, and the losses we anticipate. We are haunted by our mortality, and disturbed by our many limits. We look out at the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and even here, at this fragile Earth, our island home, and we feel like there should somehow be more.
***
As I made my way here this morning, I watched flock after flock after flock appear in my vision. Birds down at the shore, moving en masse to escape someone’s willfully errant dog; uplands flocks of birds moving from tree to tree; horses gathered to share their communion in fields.
If I struggle to imagine Heaven, it is easy to imagine Hell, in infinite forms and flavours. I can picture what it would be like to be all-powerful and all alone, trapped in emptiness and isolation. An eternity of that would be rather less than what we have right here.
We are certainly made for something expansive, and generative, something endless, and I think that we might call that “togetherness” or “relationship”. I watch the other fruit of Creation stirring about, and glimpsing the presence of the Other, I realize that I am not alone, that I do not know what the flock before me will do, and that neither does the flock know me. The infinite is with us in that moment, as all our many possibilities come with us into a space of meeting where we can be surprised by one another, and be changed by the encounter, and know that God here.
***
Another Hell: I can imagine a place of no sorrows, but I cannot really want to be there. Maybe we might hope for somewhere where there are no new sorrows, but a good-enough eternity has to be able to hold the sorrows that have already been. Life so abounds with tragedies, and while we might hope to not be transfixed by them forever, to be trapped in an eternity where we have to pretend they did not happen seems to me the greater loss.
Now and then I catch glimpses in the faces of friends and loved-ones, and even the odd stranger, of just how much I need them, and just how much we need each other. That is a holy image.
We are not made to be able to let go of everything, but to be able to hold on to everyone. We all need each other, and while at times we feel small and inadequate and ashamed, it is not shameful, it is good. It is so good that we get to find in one another our chances to grow and our opportunities to let go. We are blessings and balms to one another. Relationship is a gift.
***
If we are citizens of anything, it is not some fixed and powerful and flawless other realm, imbued with eternity and emptiness and isolation, but it is a field in which interaction can occur, in which suffering can be shared, and in which the glorious presence of the Other can now and then be revealed. We are made for relationship, we are made for togetherness.
If there is any truly fallen thing about Creation, it has to be the illusions of our separation, and I think this is really the finitude against which we strain. It is not so awful that we will die, but it is awful that in dying we feel we are now alone in the places where only that lost soul could meet us. This is not a property of the fabric of the universe, however, and what Good News this is.
***
To proclaim the Resurrection first allows that death has happened; that God in Christ has ventured into the emptiness and the darkness that we fear destroys us all, and has broken those gates decisively, and set every trapped soul thereby free.
I have to think that God did not make guards for the underworld who would make sure that there was wallowing and waiting in a place of silence and separation, but perhaps that souls needed someone to tell them they were already free; certainly, this is what most of us who walk the Earth also seem to need. We need to set one another free from the illusions that seem to isolate and separate, that diminish and endeavour to destroy, but ultimately are laid bare themselves, as empty and worthless and fleeting.
Christ joins with those who fear that they are lost forever, and shows them the way back home.
There may be sorrows that keep us bound in places so very dark and cold and lonely, but as soon as they are shared, as soon as some connection is admitted, a little light and warmth can break in, and we can see that despair will not be our eternity. Christ comes alongside us to share our sorrows, and to meet us in them, not to displace us to some other, foreign realm in which our sorrows and our longings are destroyed.
***
Resurrection is the restoration of connection and relationship, and it is our repatriation among the living for all eternity. Let free from the bonds that divide us, we return to relationship once more.
If we are made for Heaven, then that looks something very like togetherness, and that is not some other realm prepared for us to encounter only once we die; it is a field in which even now we are present and in which we can meaningfully commune. We are together, now, with all those souls that have ever been created, and with every good thing in all Creation. We are together with birds and horses and each other, with galaxies, suns, and on and on and on.
There is an eternity unfolding here among us and within us, and it is not really quite the disappointment we might sometimes make it out to be. We suffer, yes, and our suffering is significant, and yet we might also be able to suffer together, which is the most I could hope for in any kind of Heaven, and, perhaps, the hope that we might not make any more suffering and pain.
Here is this place where we can realize the eternal hope of the longed-for place of connection and of Resurrection, where we can live and move and have our being among the living, and proclaim the presence even of those who seem far-off: those separated from us by illusory borders projected onto the space of Creation; and those who merely seem to be lost because of fears we hold about death and time.
***
May you know that your home has never been far from you, and will never be taken from you, and that our home in God is in togetherness. May you know in your relationships with all Creation, the relationship you always share with your Creator. May you never fear that you are alone, but always know that your sorrows are held and shared with those who make the journey with you, in Christ and in the fragments of our suffering that can be shared. May you know your light and your salvation, your Resurrection and your hope, which can always be found in the hearts, the hands, the soulful presence of all those who alongside you have ever lived and died.