(A post inspired by Mel’s essay on Monday, which was in turn inspired by Joanna Brooks’ recent’ post at Ask Mormon Girl)
You know how we all imagine that ‘dog heaven’ will be a place where dogs get to do what dogs like, like ride in cars with their heads hanging out the window or run through meadows chasing balls and sticks? Somehow, ‘Mormon heaven’ has never sounded like ‘Claire heaven’ to me. Walking around primly, peacefully and quietly in a shapeless white dress doing what someone else told me was the greatest most important thing I could be doing? Even doing pretty much that in the temple with people I loved – my family- was never exactly heavenly for me. I always felt as if I was trying to convince myself that this was fun just like I have to do at amusement parks. It never seemed liberating, joyful or peaceful; mainly awkward and somewhat a relief that I’d checked that box on the lifelong to-do list. I don’t want to be awkward in heaven, wondering if I’m doing ‘it’ right and wishing I was somewhere else (telestial kingdom?) where I could run and chase things and let my tongue hang out.
When I let go of someone else telling me what heaven was like, what the sealing power was, it was nothing short of liberating. I don’t have to be afraid I’ll be eternally stuck doing what someone else thinks is heavenly! Why can’t my heaven with my family be sitting in my grandparents kitchen eating strawberry shortcake? Piecing a quilt with my mom in her sewing room? Dropping from the rafters in my uncle’s barn into huge piles of hay? Watching Dr. Who with my dad and my brother on a tiny black and white television while we eat tater tots? Building sandcastles with my husband and children on some celestial beach? All those things sound like heaven to me. Being sealed can really mean continuing the ‘same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there’ if that’s what I want it to mean.
I don’t feel as if I have to get hung up on rules anymore about who can be sealed to who, or when, or how it will be ‘sorted out in the hereafter’ -I have a somewhat complicated family tree- because it’s not about the rules or the words or even the actual ordinances to me anymore. It’s about the what we have actually done to seal our families together- the way we’ve nourished each other, bound ourselves together, the castles we’ve created.
I truly loved this.
Celestial beaches. . . and chocolate at judgment.
Great post. I would attend RS if I could hear such inspiring common sense as your sense of heaven and sealing our families by nourishing our relationships on earth.
I loved this post. I’ve always been unsold on the Celestial Kingdom, but you described a place I want to go to. You really cleared something up for me that I’ve been bothered about for years. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Great thoughts, Claire. I think one thing that has always made me wonder if heaven was for me has been the idea that if there’s any humor, it’s got to be carefully correlated (i.e., “appropriate). I think I would prefer somewhere that has at least a little raucous laughter some of the time.
Claire, I almost didn’t read this because I hate stories where the dog dies. :)
I think I’ve always been good at hearing the parts I want to hear in Mormon doctrine, so I always was planning on hanging out and doing what I’d like to do in eternity. I always figured I’d be able to find things out about my family– why my gggrandmother decided to leave Denmark and her 4 adult children there, at the age of 70, to go live in Mississippi with her oldest daughter, in 1873. I hoped I’d have time to watch and understand people from cultures all over the world and throughout different times. I hoped we’d find out what happened to D. B. Cooper and Amelia Earhart. Now, I just hope there’s something good coming, if it’s not just nothingness.
I like hoping for the “same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there” with one caveat: would that all our conversations will sound more like a well-written movie script than some of the witless talk we suffer through much of our time on this planet.
Ed, like His Girl Friday . I would also like the fabulous wardrobe to go with it.
Claire, great post.