Friday and Heaven's Pearly Gates

Heaven ©Bonnie J. Schupp

Today? How can it be Friday already? I blinked and another week passed!

I’m in the third quarter of my life, or the fourth quarter, depending on how long I might live. Days no longer stretch out like forever long strings of taffy as they did when I was a young child. Now the days remind me of my 5-year-old self who would begin running downhill and eventually the run grew out of control and my legs couldn’t move as fast as the hill was descending. Of course, I’d eventually fall. It was inevitable.

Eventually my taffy strings will break, my “legs” won’t be able to keep up with my subjective time and I’ll fall.

At age 65, with a time perspective different from that of my childhood, and as I experience the death of family members and friends, I sometimes  think about my own departure from the life I know now.  As a child, I learned that we live a good life today and then in the next life there will be a good life in heaven—forever.  

That was comforting but very distant. Today I realize that nobody knows the “beyond” answers. And, really, I don’t care if there is a heaven or not. I  live the best life I’m capable of living—now. Afterward, as the old song says, “que sera, sera.”  

I don’t dwell on the beyond but today I read two thought-provoking discussions of heaven and death (unusual day to begin my day, right?):

One makes the case that even if there is a heaven, it might not be so great.

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/pearlygates.html

The other talks about how atheists might find it easier to cope with death than those who believe in an afterlife.

http://www.alternet.org/story/148825/why_atheists_are_better_prepared_for_death_than_believers?page=1

Interesting...but now it’s Friday and I have a lot to do...

© Bonnie J. Schupp

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