When conjecture ponders Heaven

No one is forgotten in heaven, certainly, but creation has a propensity to forget an abundance of things, including the bulk of those who have died. It’s OK. The saints are not disturbed or angry. They are surely aware, though, that if everyone would pray together — both creation and the saints — then creation and heaven would be in synch. It’s a rather obvious thing. I believe saints ponder this often, for they await our arrivals. Or, I'm wrong, and nobody cares later. 

The distance between creation and heaven is thinner than the width of an atom. That's not pure conjecture -- just thinly evidenced. Still, though, it’s an impermeable veil except for when God allows creation to see through it. Several times in scripture that veil has been opened. 

Creation, most likely sits in the midst of heaven. Heaven wouldn't have any edges, would it? 

Is it improper to think of heaven and earth in creation this way?

When we get there, rather than when we leave


http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/110518.cfm
Philippians 2:1-4
Luke 14:12-14


Do prayers from frightened children, prayers formed under the threat of death, and prayers that put God on the spot all strike at God's heart in the same way? Is anyone other than God listening to these prayers? 

We Christian Catholic folk presume, or more properly imagine, that we know God is not the only one to hear our prayers. The angels and the Communion of Saints are probably privy to almost all our communications. As the wind and the waves and the footsteps of creation move about on earth, I believe the angels watch. And, as we pray, I also believe the saints pray with us. 

Before I tell the upcoming tales of three prayers from our fellow members of creation -- a child, a man in crisis, and a woman pleading for God to answer -- we have some background to review. We need to peruse a coffee shop primer on how creation and heaven work together. All three examples of prayer I'm about to tell show simple people passing from this life into holiness in the next. Without this primer in mind most of us might be too sad to listen as we struggle with the unfortunate demise of surely innocents folks. Probably because they mirror our own eventual deaths. We might disregard the eventual path of their passing because we are angry at death's cruelty. We don't immediately think of the intricacies of life and eternity regarding death. I begin with a perspective to remind us that death's final and brutal act isn't final at all.

Let's review the mystical reality of our universe placed within heaven's view. We exist, I believe, in the full view and even interaction with heaven's watchful and intercessory hosts. 

Orchestrating angels as they watch all of creation, plus interacting with the residents of heaven (an inestimable number of saints) as they pray for our divine intercession, takes an incredible amount of organization and readiness. We’re not sure how many angels remain in heaven while so many hover about us here, any more than we can calculate the multitude of saints. Plus, we can't fathom how the angel's deployment schedule works out and the prayer dispatching system properly lines up. We do know (or, maybe I'm just guessing) that the angels of heaven and the angels of earth note every prayer request they hear from earth. They don’t write them down, but they collect them, measuring them against their innate moral compass, watching for how God responds to each one. They are curious and expectant about us. See 1 Peter 1:12, Hebrews 12:22, Luke 4:10, and Hebrews 2:6. 

We have to be careful, as said in Colossians 2:18, not to worship angels. I probably don't have to say this, but being reminded to be careful is good, like those bumpy and noisy edges when we drift off the center lanes of a highway. 

Next are the saints.

The Communion of Saints are more ponderous than curious. They pray for those who struggle through life, especially with an urgency over those in creation who ask them personally to intercede. Some find this a ridiculous idea, and perhaps a heresy of our separate existence from heaven. Yet, Catholics allow for channels of prayerful communication. For, after living even just a short moment or two, the saints hold dear every breath, and pray for those born and those about to die. Each breath is an opportunity for prayer. I get this from Hebrews 12. 

Not everyone takes my interpretation of scripture as solidly as I do. That's OK. We'll all find out later. It is important, I believe, to consider such things, acting like the babe in the womb. We can be pleased to be housed inside our mother's protection, but a path of transition awaits us. We are about to burst into a reality we can barely imagine. It helps to consider what the scriptures tell us for both hope and proper expectation.

No one is forgotten in heaven, certainly, but creation has a propensity to forget an abundance of things, including the bulk of those who have died. It’s OK. The saints are not disturbed or angry. They are surely aware, though, that if everyone would pray together — both creation and the saints — then creation and heaven would be in synch. It’s a rather obvious thing. I believe saints ponder this often, for they await our arrivals. Or, I'm wrong, and nobody cares later. (Sure, like our experiences in the womb make no difference to us now.)

The distance between creation and heaven is thinner than the width of an atom. That's not pure conjecture -- just thinly evidenced. Still, though, it’s an impermeable veil except for when God allows creation to see through it. Several times in scripture that veil has been opened. 

Creation, most likely, sits in the midst of heaven. Heaven wouldn't have any edges, would it? Everything that is created wouldn't have to have edges. Creation and heaven are certainly not the same size, like two opposing planets. Creation can only be a small spot compared to the divine-breadth and divine-depth of heaven. Creation is accessible enough for anyone within divine communion with God to see into it, probably from anywhere in heaven. It's fine to guess such things, because that places our concentration on death's result within the consideration of heaven's existence. I do this rather than focus on the dentist's chair appointment-like eventuality of death.

Lou, a wise man, explained that both divinity’s architecture and physics surpasses our understanding. Well, I said that. But then he said. "Yes, for how would you explain to a child in his mother's womb about a tree?" That's pretty wise.

Those few paragraphs are not a definitive primer. But it is a brochure, albeit by an amateur who's never been out of this current womb. Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension offers a darn good story involving angels and saints. My primer assumes the Jesus stuff is already ensconced in our minds. 

To our stories, then. 

The saints watched as three people prayed from earth. This is a common occurrence as more than 600 people die every second (or is it way more, or about half that -- oh well, it's a lot). The saints are urged to pay special attention to people in their final grip on life. It’s an unimaginable coordination, only sensible if you live in the heavenly realm. Meanwhile, the angels -- both local and some assigned heavenly hosts -- attended to these three folks who called out to God. We begin with a boy in Kansas.

A whirling East wind whacked a tree branch against Trevor Holmes house, periodically scratching a window in its wild wrangling slaps. Nine year old Trevor listened clutching his dog, Moan — named for the sounds he made as a pup whenever he and Trevor got separated. Moan growled lowly at every screech of the branch on the glass. The boy and his dog were the same age. They’d slept together most nights. 

Trevor prayed that everyone he knew was safe at home with their families and not out, alone and afraid in the wind. The angels noted this. The saints nodded and prayed with Trevor. Moan turned his head to Trevor. The boy touched the cross on the necklace he's worn every day since his First Communion. “Pray that the wind calms down, Moan,” Trevor said. Moan stared at him, sensing the boy’s fear. He pushed his head into Trevor’s neck.

Our records on Trevor’s death do not match heaven’s. A congenital heart anomaly took his life. The further transitory particulars of his death include an incredible matrix of sorrows and corresponding graces upon his family, blessings to his friends, while simultaneously a number of hallowed procedures preceded Trevor's entry into heaven’s realm. Moan did meet up with Trevor later in heaven. The tears and misery rampant in creation’s response only subsided as each affected person also began their own hallowed procedures. The storm, by the way, did calm down and no one was injured or outside in the wind all alone.

Hugo Steener steered his tractor angled uphill as he dragged a sled of chain link along the silty beach at the Northern end of Sweden. At 74, Hugo knew the sea’s periodic seizures as the water attempted to hide from the storm. It never learned. Instead of getting away from the storm the sea ran further and further into the beach only to be pulled back into the storm’s rage. Hugo coaxed a berm of sand to rise higher and higher to protect his crops from the waves slashing needlessly into his property. He watched the salt water splash and spray closer to his farm’s edge and prayed as he pulled at the sand. “Let this storm pass quickly, dear Lord. I’ll do what I do. You do what you do. Tell the waves to not get frightened and flee from where they belong.”

Hugo’s farm did survive the storm. There is that. Hugo did not. His tractor was never found. Hugo's body lay wrapped around the trunk of a tree which he'd planted as a child, just a few yards from his house. Hugo himself spent quite awhile being greeted and cared for by relatives both recent and ancient in the wonderfully bright and rageless spaces of heaven. His perspective on ocean storms and the fretfulness of waves became an opera in heaven to the delight of everyone. 

High on a forest hill far from the city of Seol, South Korea, Eun Jung walked through the woods reciting the rosary as she did every day heading home from work. “Hail Mary full of grace,” Eun chanted, rolling her rosary in her fingers. Her mother taught her to pray the ancient litany of pleas on this very path. Her mother had passed away walking home one day with this same rosary in her hands. Eun was now a few years older than her mother when she had died two decades ago. She stopped at the spot where Mother Jung had collapsed and asked as she did almost every day, “Jesus, do you walk with Mother for me? I have asked you many times. She would enjoy that. I’m sure Mother Mary has told you that I asked. It would mean a great deal to me to know. OK. I’m going home now.”

Prescient of Eun to use that phrase. She did not die on that spot, but later when she was home, in her sleep. Her mother met her in heaven, and took her right away on a walk with Jesus. They had a great time. Eun never attempted to apologize to God for not speaking to her. She said, "Thank you." She recognized his voice at once, and nodded about how steadily he had been communicating with her through her entire life.

The three tales depend upon our how our personal beliefs align with scripture's view of heaven and creation. If we have a scriptural baseline, that is. 

Angels and saints do not know the prayers in the hearts of God’s creation. We are told that's not possible, but they must hear them from our lips. God is the only one who knows our heart. Neither angels nor devils can go there. 

It’s not that prayers aren’t official if we don’t say them out loud. It’s just that the angels and the saints don’t get to hear them unless we do. Now, God does let heaven in on every prayer (a wild-eyed supposition), but with so many prayers going on you can imagine the more delightful imagery of verbal prayers going straight to the ears of the angels and saints.

God’s answers in every case are remarkable, for he makes sure the angels know what he does as he does it. The saints, however, are charged with interpretation, putting the causes and effects together, because the saints are constantly being trained and brought closer to divinity. It’s about love and knowing the mind of God. The particular differences of angels and saints won't be clear here. Well, maybe when they come to harvest the good from the bad we'll have more info.

The answers by God to our prayers do not seem to come as we cry out. If we hear them from others, we might figure out how he does things later. In the whirls of the wind and the waves on the beach and the footsteps on the paths, however, the prayers are often released loudly from the lips of people. The angels and saints will certainly hear. To repeat, I believe verbal prayers are delightful for heaven.

As you might expect, Trevor, Hugo, and Eun all arrived in heaven that day. They were shaken and stunned at the immediate transformation from their places on the beach, on the path, or cuddled with their dog. The saints met them after the angels escorted them to Jesus, and after Jesus then brought them to heaven and filled them with the Holy Spirit, and probably after they were embraced by the Father. 

The stories may sound very real to some, though only imagined by me, because it's how a lot of us have imagined death and also the three persons of God.

Unlike our three new Saints, not everyone prays and knows much about heaven. Or, the Trinity. So much must be purged from our lives if we are not encased in prayers and subsequent grasped blessing. So the time to cross the thin veil into heaven, even after someone has died, may be much longer for many. Even in their death they may be under a veil.

Some do not want to see heaven at all. It is an incredible loss to God for each one who balks, or refuses to pray. We’re not sure about the math on this, but quite a few of the 600 or more folks per second offered heaven are simply unaware of the offer. 

We are not privy to the numbers who never properly cross over, or those who never will. Prayer, however, synched between heaven and creation attempts to breach the chasm of the thin atomic veil, and we are best informed to allow for the angels and saints to be engaged in our life and our prayers.

You might think the saints Trevor, Hugo and Eun are mythical, fictional characters. They most certainly are. Every being of creation, however, is not. That includes yourself, and me. Plus, the rest of the trillions of Saints, and all of the faithful angels, are certainly not mythical or fictional.

Not to the God I believe in. Not to me.

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