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| Yeah, it's simple. One's empty, one's full. Up and down. Good and bad. Black 'n' white So what's the problem? |
It’s easy for me to imagine Hell: eating slices of cucumber, listening to Orff’s Carmina Burana, drinking wine based on the gamay grape, living within the smirk of Jacob Rees-Mogg, facing a holiday at Disneyland, driving an Austin Cambridge, reading any novel by James Paterson, enduring a lesson by my old chemistry master, finding an apartment in London, accidentally smelling boiled milk, vacuum cleaning carpets, picking up dog droppings, finding shoes that fit…
… you get the idea. But imagining Heaven is another matter. Should I bother, given I’m an atheist? Christians are discouraged from imagining Heaven since their feeble attempts in the past have led to caricatures hardly distinguishable from Hell. Also it’s hard on the imagination; 98% of the time consists of praising God but I assume this adds up to more than saying stuff over and over. Starting on Monday surely you’d have run out of ideas by Wednesday.
The problem with good things is that they often become bad things if repeated. When tomato juice became available after the war I found its taste seductive. Bought myself a 1½-pint tin, glugged it in less than ten minutes, never tried it since.
And here’s a point. Suppose I reverted to an old enthusiasm, rock climbing. It being Heaven, risk would have been eliminated. Couldn’t fall even if I wanted to. Rock climbing is, like all sport, pointless. Non-falling would make it even more pointless.
I’d write a novel No bad things in Heaven so it would become a best-seller. Over and over.
Clever Christians get round this by saying one may not understand the mind of God. So Heaven would be unimaginable. Would you take that proposition on trust?
Millions of comments to every post. Ho hum. More sometime later.
I have always felt that Fitzgerald, in his own translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam got it right:
ReplyDelete“Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.”
But i don't imagine Christians singing that in church
MikeM: Singing lessons should be a measure of my progress. But sometimes - as is the case at the moment - they're a revelation of my deterioration as I struggle with an intonation problem during this passage from Ye Banks And Braes:
ReplyDelete".... and I sae weary, fu' o' care
Ye'll break my hairt, ye warbling birds... "
Forget the Scottish accent, there's no profit in it for you. The frst three notes of that second line are an ascending triad (so you'll be aware of the intervals) and "break" is a D, not high but high-ish by my standards. For some reason the vowel sound either becomes overly nasal or a sense of strain is apparent. Mouth shape is a key issue but it's just possible that the muscular restrictions resulting from the second op on my mouth may play a part. But it's been some weeks now and I still struggle.
In the end, I'll crack it. As I constantly remind myself: Nobody ever said any of this would be easy. For this is music.
But Heaven, by implication, is trouble free (for believers, of course). I don't resent my situation, being the optimisitic fool I am, and there have to be toughies like this as prelude to a sense of achievement. Would they break the rules for me?
Avus: If Heaven's stuffed with fulfilled desire there's nothing much to look forward to. Happiness and/or contentment need some sort of yardstick to show they're actually happening. Fitz seems to be saying: Heaven or Hell, what's the difference? Which may be his view but it doesn't offer much potential for a discussion about the traditional views of these two post-mortem destinations.
ReplyDeletea god that loves you but sends you to hell for not worshipping him enough or for just indulging in pleasure? no thanks. and heaven where everything is perfect all the time? sounds awfully boring to me.
ReplyDeleteellen abbot: I was inviting an act of imagination. How could all things be perfect? Perfect isn't an absolute quality, it needs some kind of comparison to make it stick. And, by Jesuitical argument, something that was less-than-perfect couldn't find a place in Heaven.
ReplyDelete