...in Heaven...

Last weekend,  we bundled the babies into the car and headed to one of our favourite places, Glendalough. Gleann dá loch, or ‘the valley of the two lakes’ is the site of an ancient monastic city founded in the 6^th century by St. Kevin. The round tower still stands as well as the ruins of a cathedral. It’s a paradise of outstanding natural beauty and it’s no surprise that Christians of long ago chose the sheltered spot between the two lakes to be home to a community dedicated to the service of God.

We took the walk along the northern edge of the smaller lake, through a forest of trees and it was early enough to be fairly deserted. The stillness and peace was so refreshing. As we went on, we began to meet more and more people out for a weekend ramble. As is the tradition in Ireland, we would nod to the people we passed and say ‘hello’ or ‘nice day, isn’t it?’ and more than once a kind person would stop to coo over our new son and indulge our precocious toddler. If heaven is place that we go to after this life, I like to think it’s like Glendalough on a Saturday morning in early autumn. 

When we think of heaven, we usually think of it as somewhere to be experienced after death; a utopian perfection where pain and suffering cease, a place so good and pure that it could not possibly be tasted on this side of the veil. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus says that it is the place where God resides (‘Our Father in heaven’), where the Creator is present. He speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven being ‘near’ or ‘at hand’, not something far off.

I like to think of heaven not (only) as a place for a soul to rest eternally, but as an experience of being where God is and living accordingly? Jesus lived the Heaven he spoke of; loving justice, showing mercy and walking humbly with his God, emptying himself of his majesty and incarnating the Spirit here amongst us.

As artists who follow in the Master’s footsteps, I believe we are called to a similar incarnation; to create work that is empty of the ego and full of the heavenly (just, peaceful, loving, merciful) glory of God. This is bigger than making work that simply gives a recipe for post-life peace. It’s about creating art that points to another way,  another radically beautiful, intentional, counter cultural way of justice, peace, love and mercy. More challengingly, it is about finding out where God is already in the world and using our work to reveal that Presence, even if it’s in places we would rather not venture or where angels would fear to tread.

It’s easy for my soul to be restored by the still waters of the lake at Glendalough, for me to be inspired by the picture perfect paradise that called to the saints of the long ago. It’s far harder to look for the presence of Christ in the messy lives of my family and friends, in my church’s failures, in the economic fall out of a decade of greed and avarice.  I pray that God awakens our creative senses to see heaven, and therefore, hope in these places and humbly offer it to others who may need it.

Melanie Clark Pullen is an actor and writer living in Ireland.

Comments

[Jeanne Damoff]

Beautiful, Melanie. Thank you for these lovely thoughts. They're worth pondering, and I plan to do just that.

Love, Jeanne

[Melody]

I agree that heaven is Glendalough on a Saturday morning in early Autumn. Lovely.

[Madison Richards]

"If heaven is place that we go to after this life, I like to think it’s like Glendalough on a Saturday morning in early autumn."

Your words, your descriptions...the way you have drawn my heart toward a higher realm of creativity - stirs in me the desire to look at life upside down and sideways. After all, who is to say that the side we're looking at now is better than the one to come in the next moment, the next year, or the next chapter...

Beautiful...
Madsion

[Jonassink]

Well said. You are not alone in seeing a connection between faith, art and justice. I have been thinking and writing often about this in the last year.