One of *them*

I like to try and assume the best of people, even though I'm a bit of a cynic, so I'm prepared for disappointment. Sometimes it can nonetheless be a bit shocking to be let down.

There's an understanding that I have about Christianity, and--silly me!--it's based on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. There's this idea that is driven home repeatedly by Jesus and the various New Testament writers that foundationally, Christianity is supposed to be about love.

In the gospels, Jesus says that the whole of religion can be summed up by two rules, paraphrased by me as A: love God, and B: love people. The Apostle Paul has a whole chapter about love in the letter of 1 Corinthians. The Apostle John talks extensively about how God is love and how we should be loving because of this. So yeah, love, right?

Unfortunately, in America, there's this stereotype of Christians that are far from loving. They're harsh, judgmental, bullying, and downright bigoted. I say unfortunate because I have, for a large portion of the 30 years I have been a Christian, not seemed to have met these Christians. I thought they were actually rather rare, perhaps largely living in red states. On social media, I have often assured people that these stereotypical Christians were actually a quite vocal minority who seemed larger because of how loud and obnoxious they were.

And then this week I learned something. A lot of Christians voted for President Trump. Like, not just a sizeable chunk, but a majority of them. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60%, actually. I had to ask myself, who are these people? They're certainly not Christian leftists like me. They're not not even conservative but reasonable people like my wife, who despite having a lot of conservative values has never voted for Trump. No, I had to face up to it: it's them. It's those kind of Christians.

They're not a minority at all. The ones who claim persecution when someone says, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas!" The ones who consider the unborn more worthy of life than born people. The ones who want to legislate LGBTQ people out of existence. The ones who support Israeli genocide. It's those kind of Christians, and they're actually everywhere.

Maybe I should have guessed. It's different when you're an apparently white cishet Christian yourself and you interact with these people. They can be quite charming when you're considered one of them. But how many times have I seen the mask slip, even here in very blue California? Let someone know that you support the rights of Palestinians? Let someone know you don't condemn LGBTQ people or abortion? Let someone know that you *gasp* might consider not voting Republican? The incredulity, the confusion, even the ugliness and the anger that comes out can be shocking. Often, there's even an accusation that, "You're not a real Christian!"

I was wrong about American Christians. This is who they are. With Trump in power and Republicans controlling all three branches of government, I fear they're just going to get worse, too, out of boldness.

I've said a few times, and I've heard it from others, that sometimes it's embarrassing to admit that you're a Christian in America. I feel it now more than ever. I am an American Christian, and I don't want to be. God help us.

Long Train Runnin'

So, now I get to commute to my new job via train. I like it, to some extent, but in some other ways, it represents a certain loss of innocence. There's a magic to trains that can very easily get lost.

I don't know where this magic comes from. I do think I'm not imagining it, however. Think of a movie like The Polar Express, in which a train takes children away to meet Santa Claus, or various movies like the serious thriller Runaway Train or comedy Throw Mama from the Train in which people in trouble with the law make their final bid for freedom via the rails. There's this feeling that seems to subtly pervade the culture that says that a train is the way to get away from your problems to somewhere better. This is the real story of the Little Engine That Could.

For me personally, I had actually put a start to a story I was going to write--and who knows, I still might get it done--about my personal take on the whole phenomenon. For me, I think I know exactly what it was. When I was in grade school, I used to live in a house right next to the freeway, and on this particular stretch of freeway, there was a set of train tracks running up the middle. I remember lying in my bed at night, listening to the sound of the traffic, and the occasional clack-clack noise of trains moving along.

I lived next to the freeway, but personally, I never took it. My school was actually on the exact same street as my house, but on the other side of the freeway, so every morning, I'd walk through an underpass to get to school, and when I arrived, I could look back and see my house from the top of the monkey bars. On a regular daily basis, I essentially went nowhere. But trains and freeways? Those went places.

Once, I went on a train trip to Portland to visit my favorite cousin. I got to travel with my grandmother, of whom I was very fond. I remember spending a great deal of the trip sitting in the lounge car, which was all windows, and one could look out and see scenery. Not the same scenery every single moment like one sees at home, but new scenery all the time, always changing and scrolling by, and I can almost hear my young mind thinking, "This is very beautiful, but we're leaving it behind to move on to something new and exciting, and each piece of scenery will somehow be more exciting and beautiful than the last."

I was definitely smitten, although it may not have been just trains. Maybe it was the freeway as well, and time has made me forget much of that. After all, the thing that greatly enchanted me more than anything was the idea of moving, of going someplace new. Freeways will do that, and airplanes most of all, although for me, airplanes may have been more routine (I flew a lot as a kid), or perhaps they just seemed too much like nothing was happening with the scenery so far away that often all there is to look at is the clouds.

Of course now, here I am on the train, and there isn't much to see anyway. As I write, it's six in the morning, and outside the window is largely just an expanse of blackness with an occasional lonely streetlight flitting by. This is what I dread. Even when the afternoon brings me back, and when the seasons change and allow me to see the scenery during the morning commute, the scenery will still all be the same. Every day, I will take the same train, pass the same landmarks, arrive at the same destination, and all of this will become routine. As it is, even so early in my train commuting experience, there is a decided lack of excitement. The wheels of the train turn over and over, and the same expanse of track will take me back in a few hours. Tomorrow, I will repeat the trip, and the day after that.

Instead of the excitement of the wheels turning to take me somewhere new, the time comes that this is routine. I remember in college, I had an astrophysics professor who scoffed at the Ptolemaic model of the universe, which envisioned the stars and planets fixed in circles upon circles in the sky. I don't think he (Ptolemy or my professor) thought that there were supposed to be literal physical circular structures affixed to the dome of the sky, but my professor thought the whole thing was ridiculous, saying, "If you get enough circles, you can map out any path, so what's the point?" I thought it was very clever, since the Ptolemaic system was surprisingly accurate for being "incorrect". Today, we understand that the planets travel pretty much in ellipses, which are very circle-like. We live on a globe that turns about roughly once per day, and travels around our sun in a roughly circular path, while that sun travels in a circle around the galaxy.

See, everything goes in cycles. There's our daily cycle, and most of us have five daily cycles that fit into a weekly cycle, and fifty-two weekly cycles make a yearly cycle. Various aspects of our government run in two- four- or six-year cycles, and the U.S. conducts censuses in ten-year cycles. All of that cycling becomes rather routine. The fact that we're on a hunk of rock that flies through space on an elliptical path with a radius roughly 93 million miles should be fascinating, but by the time we're old enough to fathom the concept, we realize we've already been riding that path for numerous repetitions, and it's almost instantly old hat. Space travel? No biggie, I've already travelled at least twenty-one billion miles through space just within our solar system. Going just to the moon is a snorefest in comparison.

So here I am on the train, but I'm not convinced it's really taking me anywhere. It's a shame, and not just because of my supposed disillusion with trains. Really, I ought to be looking at it differently, and precisely because of that 93 million mile ellipse, and because I've taken a plane about halfway around the world before. There's a romanticization involved with the idea of moving in physical space, but even when we seem to be holding still, we're moving at a great rate, all the time. People are always riding on trains and driving on freeways. (As a child, I remember the sound of the freeway never completely stopped, but went through a cycle of intensity throughout a 24-hour period.) In our modern society, where everything is moving quickly all the time and information travels around the globe in an instant, the only real movement that matters anymore is socio-economic movement.

I remember I scoffed at the fact that Engels, that idealistic co-author of The Communist Manifesto happened, in his spare time when not subverting the dominant paradigm, to be the owner of a factory. Hypocrisy? Maybe, but then, how can one change the world without money? They say money makes the world go around. Well, some do, while others say love. Others still in ancient times said that it was the heavenly spheres set in motion by the gods, but in modern times, we know it's really the forces of gravity. Ramble, ramble, ramble, do I have a point?

Physical mass is what makes the physical world spin. What makes the socio-economic world spin, if that's the movement that really matters? Well, it is money and love after all, isn't it? I have a great deal of love for my family, and most of the best ways to express that love involve money: providing shelter, clothing and food; giving them gifts for fun; enjoying entertainment together; all sorts of things. Love and money provide inertia for the non-physical world, and we all need both of them, in one form or another.

Why am I taking the train? What's the real purpose of this movement, the beginning of a repetitive series of motions in which train wheels will turn thousands of times along a track to carry me to place where I will perform repetitive motions and climb aboard another train that will carry me back, rolling along those very same tracks to return me to my starting point? The moving of myself as an object to another location, just to put that object back again over and over, day after day? Physical movement is just a means to an end. I'm here because of money, which I don't like, but I need it. I'm here because of love, which is difficult, but I want it.

In order for the train to move hundreds of miles away, the wheels have to turn around and around in a tiny little radius; in order to make the wheels turn, the pistons of the engine have to shift back and forth along a short little path. Repetition, repetition, repetition, do you have a point?

By going back and forth, those little movements get translated into larger movements, and those (relatively) tiny little wheels on the train move the whole world. There's a sense of magic in that, it's just not so romantic unless you let it be. When the train approached my station, I leaned forward and eagerly strained my eyes to see what the day would have in store for me. I think there's still hope for me.

Fireproof

A couple months ago, my boss was having me research info on fire safes. As with a number of businesses, we back up the information on our servers to a tape drive, and put the tapes in a small safe to protect them from fire and/or theft. If you're not familiar (which I'm guessing most people are not), fire safes are typically given ratings of one-hour, two-hour or three-hour, which is more or less considered the amount of time a given safe can sit in a typical building fire without the contents being damaged. My boss wasn't happy when I gave him the particulars of what these ratings mean on a more technical level, expressing that he wanted a safe that would offer complete protection and be truly fire-proof. I explained to him as it says on this website:

Remember, provided there is enough heat, NOTHING IS ACTUALLY FIREPROOF and everything WILL BURN.

As you likely have heard in the news, a large portion of Southern California is burning this week. Over thirty fires have consumed half a million acres of land (about half the size of Rhode Island), taken the lives of at least six people, injured over fifty firefighters, destroyed over 1,500 homes, and are still going at this time.

Like pretty much everything that happens around me, the fires caused some introspection and reflection. Even in areas like the one where I live that are not actually on fire, ashes fall continually, and the sky has been a brownish-orange for six days and probably will continue to be for some time even if the fires are extinguished soon. Everywhere is being effected.

But it did get a bit personal on Monday morning when I drove to work and found the street my office is on blocked off by police. I was a block away from work, and though I couldn't see the fire itself, I could tell from the smoke that it was just a block away again on the far side of my office. I was allowed through the roadblock and arrived at work where my boss informed me that we were not yet told to evacuate, but we knew there was a high likelihood of it as indeed, the fire was just a block away. He himself had gone to the roof of our building and taken pictures of the flames rising through the trees on a neighboring ridge earlier that morning.

I sat at my desk and took some time to survey the junk that usually litters it. Once the call came to evacuate, which was pretty much a sure thing, I wouldn't have time to grab more than one or two things off of my desk, so I decided to be preemptive and grab everything that was irreplaceable, put it in a bag, and take it to my car that moment. It stuck me as I was gathering up my belongings that there were some things that I brought to work with me because I thought they would be safer sitting in a drawer in my work desk than sitting in a drawer in a desk in my home. "What if something happened to my house?" I'd often thought in the past. "Better to bring this to work for safekeeping." Nothing of monetary value, just personal sentimental value. Now I had come to realize that work was not a safe place after all. About an hour later, in fact, my boss would be having me load office equipment into my car to take home for safekeeping, ironically including our fire safe.

I started to think about it all. I already knew that home was not safe. I don't have a safe, so important documents are kept in a cardboard box. Put the box on the floor, and it will be destroyed in a flood. Put the box on a high shelf and it will be destroyed in a fire. Put the box in my car and it will be destroyed in a car crash. Put it anywhere at all and it could be stolen.

Is buying a safe the answer, though? Testing safes for effectiveness is a very lengthy process, and few safes that are not priced at hundreds of dollars make it. They put them in furnaces to simulate fire conditions; then while still hot, they drop them from a certain height to simulate a collapsing building; then they submerge them in water to see if they keep watertight because no doubt the firefighters will dump hundreds of gallons of water into your office building to stop the burning. If you didn't choose a safe that was good enough for the sort of fire that hit your building (which of course, you can't predict), then your stored materials will be melted, charred, smashed and soaked.

But how much is enough to spend on a safe? As the quote above indicates, despite the fact that you can be very dedicated to finding a way to protect yourself from fire, there is a chance that some sort of catastrophe will come that will burn not just your documents, but the safe itself! Sure, it's not likely, but it is possible.

The point of all of this is that in the midst of worrying throughout the rest of the day about the thousands of dollars of office equipment and confidential information of clients that were loaded into my car, I realized I could guarantee no safety. Everything that I own, and everything that my employer had put me in charge of, all of it had potential to be lost, damaged, stolen or destroyed. What's a person to do?

There is a principle that Jesus taught, and I think it's one of a handful of principles that have practical application for all people, not just those who believe in Christ's deity. Yet it is not such an obvious one like, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," or "Thou shalt not kill." In Matthew 6, Jesus said,

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

I think most people think of this as a spiritual thing, and if you are a Christian, you definitely should, but there is a completely mundane and practical application to this. Buy yourself some fancy clothes, and eventually, they will rot away and go out of style. Buy yourself a cool car, and eventually it will break down and become a pile of scrap metal. Put your money in the bank and the bank will go under due to bad business decisions or embezzlement, the bottom will fall out of the value of the dollar, the stock market crashes and the real estate bubble bursts. Every worldly possession you have can, and eventually will go away.

But if you invest in educating children? If you invest in saving the environment? If you invest in peace, love, understanding, and all sorts of other hippy-dippy stuff like that? The return on that sort of investment is worth more than any amount of money.

A friend of mine remarked that when he watches the news these days, and sees people evacuated from fire areas, repeatedly they so often seem to cry out that they have lost "everything." He wondered to me, "Don't they still have their lives? Don't they still have their families? Don't most of them have insurance that will allow them to rebuild most if not just about all of what they did lose?" It would be a tragedy if I were to lose all those material possessions, no doubt. But so long as I have my wife, my children, and my God, I have all that I truly need. And even if I did lose my family, I would have the fond memories of the joy we shared. No fire can take that away from me.

What's up with the youth in Asia?

So, I got official word yesterday. Turns out it wasn't a bruise after all. The lump on my cat's shoulder, which grew rather than shrinking away, is in fact a serious tumor.

It's serious enough that I very likely am going to have to consider having her put down. She's already clearly in some discomfort, no longer walking on that leg, but you never know... If our cat could talk and understand the situation, would she rather be dead than struggle through pain that is probably slowly increasing day after day? Or is that even a question that should be asked?

One of the hard things for some people to understand is that morality isn't often about what someone wants so much as what is right, independent of desires. I hear it come up in various discussions of numerous moral issues that it would be unloving to not let a person do {fill in the blank} if they really wanted to do it. If my cat really wants to die, does that mean it's right to have her put down?

Of course, for most people, this issue is easier with animals than fellow humans, where the issue nonetheless comes up. What I end up deciding about my cat and her treatment is likely to be largely based on affordability. The vet has suggested that the oncological surgeon would most likely charge over $1,000 for the removal of the tumor, and it's unlikely that I could justify that expense. On the other hand, if it were my wife or one of my kids with the tumor, I wouldn't be deterred by a price tag of $1 million. But what if it was my wife, and she just wanted me to let her go?

This sort of thing enters not just muddied waters morally, but legally. I don't know what the legal status of human euthanasia is here, but there is probably a difference between choosing to not treat a deadly tumor because the patient doesn't want treatment, and giving a cancer patient a lethal dose of pain medication. Generally, the former is not considered murder, while it's much more likely the latter is. But then, whatever individuals think of it, most likely the real issue is that morality trumps legality anyway, even though morality is less often as clear-cut.

Oh it is clear-cut, people will assure you. The value of human life is without measure. You don't have the right to choose who will live and who will die. Maybe, but then, by that standard, perhaps choosing no treatment at all is the only moral choice, since you leave the fate of the person with the tumor entirely in the hands of God, rather than anything else, right? Some people probably actually have this view, but I'd suspect it's a rare one. More likely, people claim that anything that one can do to preserve human life simply must be done, and no price tag is too high. Fight that tumor with everything you can throw at it, and extend the life of the patient in any way possible. Furthermore, of course one should never assume people in comas or folks like Terri Schiavo are actually dead unless their bodies finally refuse to function. And on top of that, of course, no abortions.

But do we really believe that as a society? Do we really think human life has value without limit? Would you do anything you could within your power to avoid letting people die? You know, lots of people die in car crashes every year. Lots and lots of them. Souldn't you stop driving a car? That would also cut down on pollution, which would reduce cancer rates, and now to think of it, utilizing fossil fuels in any way increases pollution as well, so you probably should not do anything that directly or indirectly uses them. After all, you could save a life! No, we as a society place a finite value on human life, and really, we should, because if we're making mental calculations as to the value of our actions, you know that throwing in a value like "infinity" makes things difficult to factor out. What if you have to choose between one life or another? How do you choose that?

Getting back to what started this, there is still a question that I think can be asked. If life (and human life in particular) has such a high value, isn't it possible that we can be dishonoring that value by letting it exist at times? In the case of my cat, her value to herself is the value to run and play and eat and climb into people's laps. To us, her value is our enjoyment of seeing her happy, and letting her be an active part of our lives. If the time comes that she can no longer enjoy these things, and we can no longer bear to see her suffering bringing no joy to anyone, doesn't it cheapen the value of her life as it existed before to let it continue as it is now? I don't know, but it's something that shakes me at times.

Personally, I find euthanasia distasteful, but I wonder if it's what we sometimes conveniently call a "necessary evil". I don't want my cat to die. But I wonder if not only the humane thing to do is to have her put down, but maybe even to do it myself rather than a stranger in a lab coat in a scary place far from home. Does a loved one wasting away on her death bed in pain and suffering have value? Her life essentially over with no hope of recovery, and nothing but pain and loneliness, what value is that? Yes, we as Christians believe there is value in a human soul, but what good does it do the soul to keep it trapped in a decaying body?

Years after my grandmother died after a painful bout with cancer, I heard a rumor that some of my relatives brought it upon themselves to inject her with morphine in her sleep, ensuring she wouldn't wake up to another day of suffering. It shocked me. While I don't know if it's true, I do wonder if it may have been morally right. It's too big of a question for me.

Two...

This morning, an odd thing happened to me that reminded me to write this post that I've had sitting on the back burner of my mind for some time, even long before the last post was written. One of my coworkers showed up at work on her day off today with her dog in tow. Although I'm not the sort of person who likes to own dogs, I am the sort who enjoys a bit of friendly interaction with other people's dogs (or just about any other pet).

Anyway, I got down on my knees in front of this dog, and said to it in a sort of baby-talk voice (yeah, I'm that sort of person as well), "Aw, aren't you a friendly puppy?" To which he turned and gave me a "doggy kiss". Now, I had been expecting and even hoping for one of these, although more of a sort of friendly lick on the cheek. What I got was more like a full-on doggy frenching, and before I fully got the word "puppy" out, this canine was licking my teeth and had his lips firmly planted on my own.

There's an odd conundrum involved with being in such a position with a dog. On the one hand, and usually the most obvious, it's sort of gross. Who knows what said dog had enjoyed in its last five meals or so and was now smearing on the inside of my mouth? On the other hand, as I said, I was (sort of) expecting such a friendly greeting. What strikes me as really interesting about this, though, is that there are some social situations in which many of us wouldn't mind a particular attractive person not formally known to us coming up and planting their lips on ours (think high school crush or the like) and yet we in no way expect that this will happen. Why is this? I have a friend who would be delighted to meet Geena Davis and have her first reaction upon meeting him be to leap into his lap and snuggle up against him, but it's highly unlikely it would happen, or that it would fail to raise an eyebrow on the rare chance that it did occur. Yet upon his visiting my house, my cat did exactly that to him, to nobody's surprise or shock.

Why do we treat animals differently? How much differently should we treat them (if at all)? I find it quite interesting that most people understand that there is a divide between people and the rest of the animal kingdom even if they don't believe so for religious reasons. Of course religiously, from a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, mankind is the crowning creation of all the universe, made last, and made to rule over the rest. Some see this as instilling in us absolute power and moral superiority, allowing us to use animals for labor, food, and even sadistic entertainment of sorts with no moral repercussions. Others see us as having responsibility to treat them like a younger sibling, giving them attention and comforts as one would a small child. Many fall somewhere in between. Is there any clear moral roadmap set out for us by the Bible or any established church institution?

Those who don't believe in the Bible, but probably lean on Darwinian principles to form their opinions on animals (not that these are entirely exclusive viewpoints, nor the only two) likewise comprise a whole spectrum of attitudes. While some may also see evolutionary principles pointing to humans as the pinnacle of evolution, I think those who really understand atheistic evolutionary theory realize that we are in many senses no more than one among many animals that inhabit the planet. Does this mean that we are to be kind and generous because they are our extended family, or does it give us license to do as we wish to them as the outcome is merely the result of their being less "fit" and therefore not worthy to survive? Once again, I see no clear roadmap set for the atheist. (I'm not the sort to assume that "atheistic = amoral".) Still, the most staunch believer in the former philosophy of the brotherhood of all animals probably knows there's something wrong with molesting sheep, and would rather be kissed by (Jessica Simpson/Josh Hartnett/insert human celebrity name of choice) than a spotted owl.

Still, I can't help but think animals deserve a place of respect in our lives, especially ones that we voluntarily have live with us as pets and/or livestock. The cat mentioned above has an annoying habit of being highly territorial when it comes to non-humans. While any person visiting our home will find our cat quite friendly and welcoming, any other animals who come within sight are subject to violent attack. A few weeks ago, she attempted to assault a strange cat who had wandered into our backyard, despite the fact that there was a thick glass plate separating them. The next day, a lump on her shoulder and a marked limp made us wonder if she had dislocated her shoulder in her vain attempt to protect her domain. The vet at the pet hospital told us that it would cost a few hundred dollars just to find out what was wrong, treatment aside.

It's one of those moments when you ponder the nature of the divide between man and beast. On one hand, with my family's current financial situation (I'm working two jobs just to pay the bills) I suspect that I may be squeezing the food budget to pay the vet bill. On the other hand, our cat is like a member of the family. What to do? A little over $600 later, I found out that the lump was essentially a big bruise, and I wished for the power to communicate with my cat the way I would with my children to say, "I understand you feel protective of your personal space, but you're not doing anybody any favors by crashing full-bore into plate glass windows. Think next time!"

Do we live in the conjunction of two worlds, one of animals and one of humans? What sets us apart? Language? Some primates seem to be able to learn sign language, and dolphins appear to have some sort of communication system as well. Usage of tools? Once again, primates can certainly learn to use various tools, and there are many instances of animals in the wild using sticks and rocks in numerous fashions to obtain food. Some have suggested that religion is what sets humans apart from animals, but I suspect from an atheistic point of view, that might be a show of our own inferiority. Besides, might it not be possible that animals have a form of religion that we simply do not understand?

I hate writing a post like this without having a specific end in mind. Not that I feel a need to wrap up every post here in a neat package, but still... Maybe the answer in some ways is not so important as asking the question. In my mind, since there is doubt, I wonder if these sort of questions may be some of the most important questions of all. After all, in weighing the balance between humans and the rest of the animals, we're in a strong minority, aren't we?

Imagine no John Lennon

As what seems to me to be an interesting bit of coincidence, I was thinking about the subject of John Lennon's death this morning, having no clue that today was the 25th anniversary of his murder. The song "Imagine" was stuck in my head, and I don't think I had heard it on the radio or anything, and it got me to thinking about that song that which I usually do. Namely, that John Lennon's funeral seems like just about the only funeral at which playing the song would be appropriate.

About 15 years ago, my family got together for a memorial service for my grandmother who had passed away about a month previously, and the first thing we did at the actual service was have my sister and cousin sing "Imagine". Even being a non-Christian at the time, I thought there was something vaguely tacky about it; after all, the opening line of the song is, "Imagine there's no heaven," which hardly seems like a sentiment one wants to imagine in the context of a beloved friend of family member passing from this life. Don't we really, at such times at least, want to imagine that there is a Heaven (assuming we don't already believe there to be one), and that our departed loved one is surely there at this moment, perhaps floating on a cloud playing a harp, lounging on soft cushions with their personal cadre of seventy houris, or perhaps looking down lovingly upon us, bathing us in the radiant warmth of their unleashed spirit?

Maybe Lennon's right though. After all, if we "imagine there's no heaven," then we can also imagine "no hell below us". Once we start coalescing on the idea of an afterlife, it's hard for many of us to imagine an eternal paradise without the flipside to that coin. Imagine that there's a Heaven after all; how can we know that my grandmother is there, or John Lennon?

Not that I have anything against John Lennon. First and foremost, he was a wonderful musician who had a profound effect on pop music ever since the Quarrymen changed their names to The Beatles. Also he was, as far as I know, a great humanitarian, activist for peace, and loving father. It's a mystery to me why any sane person would want to kill him, but apparently the person who did kill him wasn't. But does any of that matter in the final tally?

Lennon would also like people to imagine "no countries" and "no religion, too". It's funny, but I suspect many conservative Christians would tend to think of these ideas as subversive and anti-Christian, but it seems to me that this is the state of affairs described at the end of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, perhaps particularly chapter 21. Heaven passes away, there is an end to governments, and even an end to religion in the usual sense at least. Sure, the words of the song are a bit subversive, but in the end, aren't the words of our own scriptures? Still, I do have to say that it does seem unlikely that the message of John the Apostle was the same one as John the Beatle, although there are some parallels, no doubt. The book of 1John says, "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God," while Lennon put it simply, "All you need is love."

My grandmother was definitely a loving person, although I don't know of her writing anything profound on the subject. She was very passionate about political activism, the environment, and her family. One thing that I have no idea whether or not she had any passion for, and thus I would feel fairly safe to assume against, was religion and God.

The maternal side of my family are Unitarian universalists, and have been for generations. I have no way of knowing if anyone reading this knows anything about this sort-of-Christian sect, but they're largely known for believing in erasing the borders between belief systems. Want to be a Hindu, but also be a Unitarian? Why not? Don't believe in God, but still like to go to church? Sure, if it floats your boat... I don't know if they invented the concept that what you believe doesn't matter so long as you're sincere, but they went a long way towards perfecting it.

Still, at the memorial service, the song was sung, and while there may have been no intentional drive to choose a song with meaningful lyrics in a spiritual sense, it's that first line that sticks with me after all these years. I'm comforted by the thought of no countries; I've often said that maps are made up of two kinds of lines: connecting lines and dividing lines, and we need more of the former and less of the latter. I like the idea of no possessions; an idealized anarcho-communistic state in which all possessions were shared to the point where the concept of "possessions" ceased to have meaning sounds delicious. But no Heaven? Universalists believe everyone goes to Heaven, so why would we like to believe it's not there?

Maybe because despite the fact that so many of these ideals presented to us in Lennon's little lyrical daydream seem so nice, they simply aren't realistic. Nations will continue to exist, and so long as they do, men will continue to fight and even kill over who will control them, and the possessions found therein. Maybe because Heaven is one thing that we do have to imagine, since it's not here on earth with us, it's easier to imagine it gone, than to imagine it existing without its supposed polar opposite. If Heaven's there, there's probably a Hell, too. And if there's a Hell, it's probably got people in it. Maybe even John Lennon. Can we do something about it, or is it easier just to imagine it away?

Imagine there is a Heaven, and that the things we do on this earth can make a difference in making people a little closer to Heaven every day. Or better yet, believe in it, like I do.

I'm not the only one.