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I have thought long and hard on how to articulate this post. I confess that nothing that I say gives justice to the topic. On the topic of Heaven I write not as a theologian, nor do I write as a man of faith (whatever you think that means). My knowledge of what the religious scholars and books of the bible say about this place is smaller than I can begin to describe, and if you could see into the depths of my heart you would understand that my faith is many times microscopic compared to what I think that I know.

I write as a son who has watched death slowly but surely take his mother down a road that I wish no one else to follow. I write as a friend who, from a distance, has traveled the same journey of close friends who just this past Sunday held a memorial service for their father. I write as a spectator who watched along with around 1/6th of the population of the world the memorial service for one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

Smokey Robinson stated so well what, I believe, resonates in the hearts of most of the human species.

"I believe that this is not the end. I believe that this is not ALL that there is."

I just sat and read that line over again a few times.

My take on Heaven is based on a conversation I had a few years ago with a stranger in the Atlanta airport. Her name was Tina and I really didn't want to talk to her. In fact, I had just wandered down to the small bookstore to make a purchase and try to waste the remaining hours of my delayed flight in solitude away from everyone and anyone who felt a need to start a stupid conversation with me as their way of passing the time.

I had heard that a bunch of local churches were doing sermon series on a fictional book called "The Davinci Code". I thought if it caused this much of an uproar then it must be a pretty decent read. By the way, it was an ok book. It wasn't the greatest book ever, but I still never understood the religious movement against a FICTIONAL book. Anyways, I began to read it near my gate and of course within about 10 minutes this girl, who was probably just a few years older than I was, noticed what I was reading.

"Oh...the Davinci Code, such a good book."

My first thoughts were straight profanity, which I will refrain from typing here. I knew that this person wanted to talk and I should have bought Marilyn Manson's autobiography instead and maybe she would not have said anything. That reminds me, I ordered that book a while back on ebay and still haven't received it.

So I decided I couldn't just walk away and I engaged in conversation with Tina, who happened to be quite a pleasant person to be stuck at your gate with in the busiest airport in the world. I mean, I could've had some real idiot that smelt like hot garbage trying to talk to me. If that were the case, I would definitely have walked away.

Sorry for getting so sidetracked there. Back to the matter at hand: Heaven. Eventually the question came up from her about if I believed in Jesus and if I believed in Heaven.

This is a pretty close paraphrase of what I told her. It wasn't scripted or anything, it just is what makes sense in my head and now that I have seen death and disease so close it makes more sense that I can convey.

When I look at society I see a lot of bad things. We sometimes argue so much for certain veiwpoints of certain topics that we lose sight of the fact that most of what we are arguing about shouldn't be argued about in the first place. War doesn't seem ok, but it has been going on since the beginning of history. Disease doesn't seem ok. Although we have made large advances in medicine, over 700,000 Americans will die this year due to cancer. That is a staggering amount in our technilogically advanced era. In America we work more than any other country in the world, mostly so that can go on vacation or have the material possessions that our hearts desire. Meanwhile, in poor countries all over the world, people are dying of things such as the common cold or lack of penicilin. And we don't give a damn. We argue about universal healthcare being a political issue, but do we not believe that every child and every person should have the opportunity to be taken care of just as well as anybody else.

Please understand that I am trying to make no political statement other than our politics have gotten in the way of common sense. But the main issue that I told Tina in the airport was that I believe that our society as a whole is in the most simple sense "broken".

There is something wrong.

There is something off.

Some of it is in our control and some of it is not. Life is so unfair and the best word I know to describe that is that this existence as we know it and have known it through reading history is messed up. And not just a tad, but messed up quite a bit.

But let's not stop there. Take a look at yourself.

In my life I have struggled with things that I believe that we all deal with on and off throughout our lives.

Lonliness.

Broken Heart.

Wondering if we matter in this world.

Not knowing if we will be good enough children, students, husbands, wives, friends, you fill in the blank.

We are broken individually.

I am broken.

I belive strongly that there must be an answer for this. That belief has led me to Jesus and the topic of this post, Heaven.

I wrote about how my mother had become physically unrecognizable. I wish that I could tell you that image has been banned from my memory, but it has not. I dealt with nightmares consistently for weeks after her funeral dealing with her health. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't see clearly her decayed and diseased and tormented body in my mind.

To me, her body is a very accurate representation of my "broken" state of being. My soul is ridden with this disease and the symptoms are listed above as they are with every single person. When I think of her sickness I think of my inmost thoughts being so wrong at times and how I can manipulate people and on and on. I think of how our society is cancer ridden and so messed up that most of the time we don't even recognize it.

When I searched for the word "heaven" in the bible, most of the time that Jesus talked about it he talked in terms that heaven was here now. That the purpose for those who follow his teachings are to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth now in a real way for people to see.

I don't want to get too far off subject or into Heaven being just on earth. I believe that Jesus wanted us to bring the great things of Heaven i.e. justice, oneness, completeness, redemption, grace, love to the place we live now because He knew that we were a sick people with a cancer at the core of our society and our souls.

So to me, Heaven is the opposite of the picture of my mom's diseased body. It is the opposite of the things I mentioned earlier about our society and our individual hearts not being "ok". Heaven will be the place that we no longer struggle with the aspects of our lives that everyone has always struggled with.

Can you imagine that there is a place where depression does not exist? Can you picture not feeling incomplete?

No more lonliness.

No more suffering, physically or mentally.

No more inadequecy.

No more not quite measuring up.

No more sleepless nights of your mind wandering on and on about all of the dreams that you have thrown away or that you can never attain.

No more broken.

One of the last times I talked to my mom I told her that she was so close to experiencing and having everything that she had ever longed for since she was a child. None of that being toys or things, but rather all of it having to do with feeling whole. It is funny, she didn't mention anything about how the streets of gold would look or what her "mansion" would look like.

In her sickest state she only longed to be loved and to be made complete.

In my sickest state I also long to be loved and to be made complete.

I believe that my mom is home.

I look forward to seeing her there. I am sure that we will have no recollection of disease of any kind.

Until then I think about what it means to bring that "Home" to this journey.