Heaven is a religious utopia. Why do we impose an expectation of perfection upon the world? It is due to our short-comings in dealing with reality, as it is. As an adaptive defense mechanism, we place the short-coming upon the world and we dream of a utopian state of things. We escape in our mind’s eye from the “heaven that is” but which demands from us an effort at better adaptation. We shrink before it as this requires tough self-assessments, the hard travails of moral reasoning, scientific discovery, and individual character improvement, and the conflictive trial and error of social experimentation. So we concoct the utopia of heaven and oppose it to the distopia of hell, to look away, to look beyond and, in the meantime, we delay embracing the reality that is. Whether the City of God, or the Garden of Eden, whether A Brave New World or Hades, these visions reveal not a place to seek or to avoid, but they reveal how much work we still have ahead of us to fully join our living garden with our and its full potentiality. So I stop expecting perfection from the world: it is already perfect; and I start demanding humility from myself in the effort to adapt, in the travail of bearing the suffering of falling short, in the disposition of thankfulness for being written into, however briefly, the tapestry of reality.
Once, not long ago, a large bird got trapped in my garage. I watched it struggle to find an exit, time and time again blindly thrusting itself against the windows and the ceiling while all the while the garage door was fully open just a few feet below his flight path. I could tell it was in pain, hurting himself in his despair, suffering under the tyranny of a world imperfect, that would not yield to his will. This bird would dream of a world without walls. I was also in pain, watching him. He was too far up, I could not help. I tried a broom to guide him and he fought me and only got hurt further. In my sadness, I prayed: I prayed that I would be able to help this bird, that its spirit would settle, that it would surrender its despair and that it would see me as a fellow traveler to point him the way to freedom. I extended my arm and something magical happened: the bird gently landed on a moulding and looked down into me. He then gently flew down and rested on my hand, his breast still agitated. My heart stopped with joy and amazement. I walked out of the garage and onto my front yard, the bird would not move, he would just look at me. I extended my arm out and I waited for what seemed like an eternity. For a few precious minutes, I felt a bond with this bird and, through him, with the entire world. He remained there until my family drove noisily up the driveway, but not before they witnessed the bird gently resting on my hand. I have never forgotten this day and it shines brightly and uniquely in my consciousness piercing the gray turmoil of my anxious mind.
I realized on that day that we are in the Garden: Heaven or Hell is up to us, or we may just dispel the dreams and nightmares focusing instead upon tending the Garden we belong to while surrendering to the mortal joy of this blessed toil.
