Finding Heaven

Friday August 29^th 2008. 10:04 PM.

Here lately it seems that I seem to do all of my best, my clearest thinking at night. Maybe I have always had that tendency, but I don’t ever recall noticing it before, but it seems to be the case at least in my recent memory. So, tonight, I find myself in a familiar posture, alone in my dark living room in front of yet another blank screen patiently waiting for my touch to bring it to life. A fan in the window carries a slightly less than warm late summer breeze through my personal space, the faint scent of freshly brewed coffee fills my senses, Its not warm in here, yet strangely not cold either, the mood is perfect for a little reflection. Is Heaven real? Hmmm. Its as good a question as any I suppose, I saw that written somewhere, or perhaps I heard it spoken, I don’t really recall, only that it was recently brought into place somewhere in the back of my mind this week, and it appears to have stayed there until now.

I knew Heaven once, I lived there, somewhere in my early childhood, and on some nights, some like this night, I can close my eyes and see it as plain as day.

There is a wooden floor beneath my bare feet, my small hands clutch the brass doorknob , and it turns freely, I give the door a slight nudge and it swings outward onto a back porch that seems slightly sloped to one side. I step out into the early morning air, the fresh dew, and the grass seems to flow out into the world forever, in an endless sea of beautiful green. There are large trees that stretch up into the sky for miles on end, and on one of the lower branches there is a tire swing that hangs strangely still as if it were waiting for the next ride. And as I step onto the grass the cold dew seeps up and over the tops of my feet giving me a strange sensation.

I’m not sure what it is truthfully, whether or not the world really was a much larger place then than it is now, or if it just seems that way, because I was seeing it through the eyes of a child. It was more magical, there was more wonder, and Heaven was a real place that I lived in, a place that I touched regularly. Now, as I begrudgingly return to the here and now, and that childhood memory slowly fades, I find myself wondering if I will ever see heaven again. oh I am certain that I catch glimpses of it every now and then, but the magic isn’t what it once was, and the open spaces in the world of childhood have become somewhat cramped and closed in. but thankfully the world can still be a place of wonder, You just have to force yourself to stop what you are doing every once in awhile to take part in it.

Yes, I know Heaven to be real, I just don’t live there anymore, I don’t see endless fields of green, and miles of empty clean blue skies, and a lot of the trees have been cut down, to make room for new housing tracks. I am not a child anymore, I don’t see the world the same way as I used to, it is a bit smaller now, and I can see it for what it truly is. I see the bad with the good, and take both as I see fit. Everyone has their own interpretation of Heaven, and certainly to some it remains a myth. The reality for me is simple, I know that I will never be able to again see the world through the eyes of a ten year old child, but that doesn’t mean that I have to stop trying. So on finding Heaven? I guess it all depends on where you look.