I wish someone would start a project of taking members aside individually and asking them to describe their thoughts of what the next life will be like, then write an essay with the findings. A favorite LDS cartoon of mine (by Bagley or Grondahl, I can’t remember which) shows a husband and wife in the clouds of the celestial kingdom; the man with his feet up in a La-Z-Boy reading the newspaper, the woman ironing white robes. She says, “I dunno… I thought it was going to be, you know, different.”
While most Saints would probably admit they have no idea what it’s going to be like (although a few will give you an unsettling big smile and say, without a hint of thorazine, “It will be glorious!”), that doesn’t stop some of us from taking stabs at pet ideas. I’d like to think there’ll be amazing colors– I have difficulty grasping onto the idea that all will be bright white, like an Oxy-Clean commercial. And those robes. Will distinguishing garb suddenly not mean anything? Can we at least salvage our humor and get together Friday nights to chant, “To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!”? What kind of music will we listen to? Can I sneak in my Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd tapes? If we’re perfected bodies of flesh and bone does that mean there won’t be a thing left in the mansion to snack on?
When I think of heaven, rather than a holy homogenized environment, I think of a place full of personalized joys and sensual pleasures and heart-aching love demonstrated by a plethora of tokens. Then I step back and look at my perceptions, and an old hillbilly version of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” plays in my head. And I inexplicably sigh a sob, and then laugh at myself.
I did double-duty Temple Prep last Sunday, teaching one couple Lessons 1-3 at 4pm, and then just Lesson 3 to the regular class at 6pm. The first couple is so eager and excited to get their recommends, I could have told them the celestial kingdom is like a Fellini film and they would have happily nodded along. On the other hand, there’s a couple in the second group who agreed to take the class on the condition that it didn’t mean they had to have their recommend interviews afterward. The wife had a problem with sharing her husband after a helpful class visitor (and temple worker) volunteered that there would be more righteous women than men in the highest kingdom, and since everyone there would be married… She was like, “Wait a minute!” This sort of situation is annoying to me (even beyond the fact that I wouldn’t have shared that golden nugget of thought). The woman knows the Church is true, goes every week, pays the tithing, yadda yadda yadda– and she objects to some quasi-doctrinal blurb like it’s a stipulation in a timeshare contract. I was like, “Hello! This is heaven! We have no idea what it’s going to be like, but we do know we’ll be happy beyond our wildest imaginations, and consider this– this earth life is a blip in our overall existence. Our priorities and values have been shaped and formed by a corrupt world, and they will be so adjusted, so different when we get back, the things we find important now will become utterly silly and insignificant (as I shot daggers at said helpful member).
What is heaven going to be like?
Does it matter?
10 responses so far ↓
1 Jim // Apr 3, 2008 at 6:31 pm
David, I wonder about that too. I’m not so concerned about what *it* will be like so much as what *I* (and loved ones) will be like. If we are prone to anger (or selfishness, etc.), will these same faults continue with us? What will our relationships be like? If we struggle to communicate and understand one another, will we have similar experience in the hereafter?
I realize that we will have an eternity to work on perfection, but it seems to me that at least initially, we will be much the same then as we are now. I suppose what we make of it will be similar to what we make of our mortal probation.
A celestialized earth will be something to behold….
2 xoxoxoxo // Apr 4, 2008 at 6:36 am
We have to wear socks???? That’s it…give me my free gift for sitting through the seminar but I’m no longer interested!
3 David // Apr 4, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Jim,
I don’t think we’ll experience the pressures and frustrations we do here, so no, I would tend NOT to believe we’ll be expressing much anger or selfishness, not in the same way. As our eyes become opened, although we supposedly move on with the same characters, the sense of unknown that contributes to our anxiety will be gone. I think that alone will profoundly readjust our moods. I hope I’m right.
4 David // Apr 4, 2008 at 2:09 pm
xoxoxoxo,
Don’t worry, dear, no socks. Don’t you know, we’ll be floating a foot off the floor for the rest of our lives sans footwear? Why then are there floors? Are there floors? I just used the line from “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and inserted “Third & Highest Glory.” Nice stanza’d fit. No socks. Hey, come back– I was just foolin’ witcha!
5 JimD // Apr 4, 2008 at 2:53 pm
But do little streams of alcohol still come trickling down the rocks?
6 xoxoxoxo // Apr 4, 2008 at 10:12 pm
What you probably don’t realize is that there is a PLACE called Big Rock Candy Mountain, Utah and I always relate to THAT before I remember the sanitized song from childhood. Now that I’m a grownup, almost NOTHING about the song sounds like “heaven” anymore ya know?
7 David // Apr 4, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Well, the whole point of citing the song was to illustrate that we all have our own ideas of heaven. Fat-free, cholesterol-free chili cheese fries comes to mind.
I did know about the Utah location. Now, skippy, did you know that after the song was first released in the 1920′s, the Utah locals put up a sign that said “Big Rock Candy Mountain” at the mountain base as a joke, and it stuck? So the Utah resort was named after that nasty, sinful song. Incidentally, there are also Big Rock Candy Mountains in Colorado and Washington state.
Whoa, wait… you’re a grownup??
8 xoxoxoxo // Apr 5, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Um…..grownup? Er….well…it’s more of a charade attempted to keep the children in line.
Fat-free, cholesterol-free chili cheese fries in heaven? EWWWWWWWWW they surely wouldn’t TASTE heavenly. I’m more of a mind to hope the fries stay the same and our new improved chassis turn the fat and cholesterol into glory or something.
9 David // Apr 5, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Ha! Ha!
“With glory trailing from their feet as they chew, and endless promise in their thighs…”
Good one, skippy.
10 xoxoxoxo // Apr 6, 2008 at 3:20 am
ROFL!!! Um…I’ll never take Saturday’s Warriors seriously again…oh wait…not sure I ever did!
If the two of us were to write song lyrics together, it would be a cross between Weird Al and Janice Kapp Perry. And while scary, it would probably be more interesting than my blog seems to be.
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