Question for the Clerics.

I understand that heaven is more a state of existence than a place. In my Orthodox upbringing, we're taught that heaven is how, after death, a soul that loves God and His ways is in union with God, and in ecstatic joy, wrapped in the fullness of God's intimate love. Embraced by His love, the soul is now home and one with its creator. Hell, on the other hand, happens to a soul that has not grown to love God's ways or God's love, and now that it has passed over to the other side, lives in the eternal torment of not being able to accept, perceive, or take joy in the boundless love all around it. I would also add that it lives in contact, eternal yearning for a love and peace that it can never have, even though it exists more closely than ever.

So then, the idea is that our time on earth is time for us to condition ourselves to be open to God, to allow Him in to shape our souls, in preparation for living with him after the end, so that we become something that can receive his love, totally. In this way we will be enraptured by Him, and not alien and unfit for the love He has for us.

Question is, is it enough to WANT to love God, to yearn to be with him, to know the relief his love spells, even though you cannot stop sinning, even if you try? Is repentance enough? What if I can never truly repent? If I confess and weep and long for change, and I go and do the same thing again, have I really repented? I know this is the exact issue Christians lament and rejoice in at the very same time. It's this state of totally predictable and inescapable sin from which we are delivered. It's very, very hard to accept, sometimes, that we live in a redeemed state, no matter what we do. While the joy of Christianity lies in the idea that if we repent, believe that we are saved and forgiven, and are loved in God's eyes, it's so hard to let go of self-loathing when you steer yourself wrong. I guess, ultimately, it's more humbling to accept that you're loved despite your mistakes and your hurtful crimes, that you've marred a beloved soul, that all you have to do is keep loving yourself the way God loves you, that you have to continue to love in order to grow love. I can't explain it well enough, but it's almost humiliating to be shown love after you've messed up, royally. You wind up feeling like a dirty-faced, crying child.

Is it enough to want God? Or do you have to be living some kind of better life than what I keep getting seduced by? Or is everything I'm experiencing and choosing part of the plan to break me down, so I will finally allow His light to shine in? I've seen it before, I've been filled and warmed by it, I've been saved by it. I yearn for it now, and desperately hope I'm not unreachably far from it.

Dreams: Your All-Access Portal to the Other Side

There has been a lot of intensity in the last few weeks. 2007 has begn a year of earnest change and revelation, and also a year that focuses on forgiveness, truth, courage and change. I've met nearly uncomfortably strong or intense people that have affected me deeply, and I've also felt danger more acutely. I'm standing on a knife's edge.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with my mentor, and asked her a question to which I already knew the answer. I asked her if my grandmother was with me, intimately. My mystical mentor confirmed that she was, and that she said "hi". I couldn't stop smiling. I asked my grandmother to talk to me, or show herself to me. The last two nights, she's come to me in dreams, in a very intense way. She's different... she's part of me, more. Her body has changed. She looks younger and she's more vigourous, but in the dreams, she's been preparing for death again. She and I both know it's coming, and the dreams have revolved around the emotions that exist surrounding the idea of anticipation of the end. In the first dream, she was getting ready, walking around my maternal grandmother's house, and every chance I got, I was hugging her and begging her not to go. She was preparing the stuff that she wanted me to have. In the second dream, which was just a few hours ago, she was in our kitchen, and we were making food. Her eyes were round and wide and reminded me of my childrens'. She was putting ingredients into my bowl so I could use some crazy noodle-making instrument. I remember that it was her hands. When I saw her preparing the food, I instantly got a rush of emotion and held her in an almost childlike embrace, and kissed her the way I kiss my youngest son. I asked her why she was here, and shouldn't she be somewhere else? To which she responded, "it's going to be so much better when we go to meet Him together, don't you think?"

My dad told me that dreams in which the dead speak, are simply reflections of our own emotions, and that the departed one is a construct of your own making. Or, on the other hand, that God is telling you that it's alright. When the dead do not speak and answer questions, that's when they're really there. I don't know. Why did he say that? Daddy knows some things. But does he know about this? Greeks know a lot about dreams and have a very rich superstitious/occult kind of cultural life, that's oddly braided together with very conservative and rich Christianity. I tend to believe all of it. The issue is, of course, spiritual safety, and what to acknowledge as helpful and truthful. Are these dreams me, working through my terrifying, panic-like response to my grandmother's death? Or are they her, because I asked her to be with me? We have the same name, I was her first girl (my first cousin never bonded with her like I did), and she always walked past me, when I was around her, and told me that there was "something about you that makes you different, special, important." Then she would tell me she loved me and kiss my eyes.

I'm living a life, now, in which I'm permitting behaviour she never would have considered. I don't know at all whether or not she'd be shocked. I get the strong, odd feeling that she wouldn't be shocked at all. I think she's concerned, but she's showing a profound amount of wisdom and love.

Am I going to die soon? I have to start preparing for the end, because I very well could. I'm not off my rocker. I have to come to peace with my life and my choices. I have to be forgiven for a lot, and I have to admit to God my wrongness. I don't, for one second, think I could have avoided the various things I've done. We are imperfect creatures, and we're ruled by our passions (in the classic sense of the word). This is not a romantic notion, and it's not a write-off. We are simultaneously fallen and redeemed. I have to place myself squarely in the nexxus of truth and forgiveness, and the only way to do that is to prepare for death, and wash myself, and dress myself, so that I can be presentable when I meet Him. Even if it's not coming tomorrow, my grandmother is reminding me that it is coming, regardless. Wisdom! Let us be attentive.