My adventure into fullness of life (which I take to be the kingdom of heaven) involves reading, writing, and great conversation—preferably over a good meal. It is nourished by the arts, especially music. But there is a paradox here, one that the mystics might understand.
Christians inherit two basic views of heaven. The popular Western version tends to be of the static angels-and-harps variety. I prefer the Eastern version. It has more of the flavor of dynamic continuity. We move “from glory to glory” right now, not simply after we’re dead.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you keep me safe;
you stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies;
you right hand shall save me.
I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation.
Not long before the day on which she was to leave this life—you knew which day it was to be, O Lord, though we did not—my mother and I were alone, leaning from a window which overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house where we were staying at Ostia.
Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink
or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a
shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do
not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and
The Bible is not a magical instrument, but it has the ability to put the reader or reading community “in touch with the living God who can give you spiritual life just as he has given you natural life,” writes the English evangelist Michael Green. “The written word can put you in touch with Jesus the living word (or self-disclosure) of God.”
It was Isaac of Nineveh who confirmed what I had supposed all this time: that the biblical phrase “the world to come” refers not to pie-in-the-sky by-and-by but to “the kingdom of heaven within you.”
Once you have reached the place of tears, then know that the mind has left the prison of this world and set its foot on the road towards the new world.
Only One who knows the heart can be kind to the ungrateful and wicked.