Where Can You Find 72 Virgins These Days, and Other Questions?
The Pair-of-Cleats dispenses Grace
©2005 UrbisMedia
Anyone who has been in a state of consciousness for the past few years couldn’t help hearing about the conception of heaven for Muslim “heros” who have died in a jihad: a place where each martyr has 72 virgins and rivers of wine. Besides asking whether this place applies towomen Muslims who have died fighting in a jihad, I have a lot of questions to ask about such a heaven. But I will give the Muslims this much, they at least have some specificity about what they would be doing during their eternity. I can only imagine what some Christians expect their eternity will be like—after the Rapture, of course—but I do seem to remember what Roman Catholics were encouraged lead pious lives to earn.
My elementary school nuns told me that heaven would be an eternity “looking into the face of God.” Now God must have a beautiful face, but looking at it for eternity, even a few hundred thousand years, has got to get older than Gilligan’s Island re-runs.
You don’t even have to be a “lapsed Catholic,” like myself to see how silly the Church’s liturgy can get But why shouldn’t my first grade teacher, Sister Ignatius (who looked old enough to be on loan from eternity herself), believe in such a silly notion when every depiction of heaven in church-sponsored art shows a bunch of the enraptured sitting around on clouds and not doing much else than looking into the face of God. So the most fundamental purpose of leading a pious life – to get to heaven – is based on something that sounds . . . sorry, I have to say it . . . boring.
But that’s only the beginning.
One of the cardinals interviewed before the Papal Conclave went in session stated to the press that he would pray for “guidance from the Holy Ghost.” He said it with the Matter-of-factness of someone saying he flosses once a day. Now I have a confession to make (Bless me Father; it has been . . . for . . . for-ty . . . ah . . . years since my last confession) – The Holy Ghost thing has always been a big problem for me. It’s tied in, of course, with the notion that there are “three persons in one God,” the HG being one of them. Unlike the other two persons, the HG doesn’t ever get a face; he’s a ghost. He usually gets represented as a dove and called the “Paraclete” (or a pair of cleats , as we used to blaspheme back in high school). So there are really two persons and one bird in God by my reckoning. Never mind that the other two are the Father and the Son at the same time. Confused yet? Well, you were probably never whacked on the back of your head by a nun’s ruler. I’m as confused as I was when I was first whacked. And today I am still wondering such things as: do they each have separate email addresses or are they three persons with one email address? ([email protected])
These are things you want to know if you are going to spend you whole life trying to get together with these guys (this guy? and the bird) in heaven.
Now let me say at this point that the Church has ways of dealing with these questions. That’s their job; that’s why they get to wear the silly clothing and pointy hats and beanies; that’s why they get to stand in cavernous cathedrals and listen to their sonorous “In NOOOHmEEEEne PaaaaHtrees . . .” reverberate around the nave. But basically, they end up telling you that you are not a priest, so you need to “take such things on faith.” There are things you just can’t fathom, but you might find out when you get to heaven. Detecting a catch 22 here? Right, I’m going to take something on faith from a superannuated Bishop who went into the seminary at the age I first started trying to feel up girls, and has a prostate the size and hardness of a bowling ball, and who’s main job has been praying for guidance from the HG as to where to move some pederast priest before some altar boy’s butt is so sore he can’t even genuflect.
But back to the HG. The one thing I remember the nuns saying about the HG is that he was the one who was sort of in charge of “grace”. Now grace is another problem for me. Grace is sort of like metaphysical money the way I see it; you can earn it and store it up. (The Prods sometimes call it “merit.”) Where does it go? Sister Ignatius said it goes in your soul. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what grace looked and felt like (maybe that’s because I couldn’t quite figure out where my soul was). Surprisingly, I found several people who agreed that when they see sunlight streaming through clouds, making rays of light streaming toward earth, they admitted that they thought of grace coming down from the HG in heaven. It worried me that I was never under one of the rays of grace. If I drove toward it, is seemed to move away from me. Who was getting it?*
I am not an atheist, maybe an agnostic, but I’m more than a little metaphysically-challenged. I still say “Godammit,” and raise my eyes heavenward and curse, or sometimes say things like “gimme a break here, will ya!” (sort of a prayer of supplication) to someone, someplace. You gotta swear at something ! I know this was all programmed into me when I was little. Face it, if I had been taught that God lived down under the ground, I’d be looking down rather than up when I do these things. And, of course, if I had been born in Iraq I would be saying things like “ Inshallah ” and hoping it keeps some semi-literate Christian GI from Suggs Ferry, Tennessee from blowing my butt to hell.
Or heaven. That’s where I got started with all this. I don’t like Mullah Omar’s concept of heaven, or Sister Ignatuis’ either. I can’t handle 72 virgins, and I don’t want to stare at God for eternity. Moreover, I don’t want to be there with Mullah Omar, Sister Ig, or those yahoo jerks who believe in the rapture.
But I don’t think I want to go to hell either, and not just to spite what some of you were suggesting as you read this. What I would really like is some emails from readers giving their conceptions of what heaven will be like (you can do hell, too, if you want to). How about it? I at least want an answer to this question: What age are you in heaven? If you die as a child are you a child for eternity? If you die as a guy who is too old for 7.2 virgins, much less 72, are you a codger forever? Don’t you think this is stuff we ought to know?
If I get a good collection, I can group and print them in these pages (with our without attribution). You won’t get paid, but who knows, you just might be in line for some grace.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 6.10.2005)
*I think that Mary Alice Flynn (not here real name) in the first seat, row 4, of Sister Ig’s first grade class, has most of it. She looked like St. Theresa, “The Little Flower,” and to the best of my knowledge, never let any guy I knew feel her up.