I just got off of the phone with a friend who’s working through the imminent death of someone who is very dear to them. Listening to her recall the depth of their friendship and knowing that it has been a long and mutual relationship between kindred spirits, I felt the hollowed ground upon which I was being asked to stand. Theirs is the kind of friendship that even though they don’t live in physical proximity to one another, the sense of caring and comfort is still most intimate.
It’s times like this when one’s religion meets the road. And as we are both people of Christian sensibilities, but not of that seemingly dominant faction who live their faith blindly and without apparent personhood. We neither of us made mention of God or Heaven. It would have been redundant.
Now I’m sewing and listening to CD’s as she travels some distance to be at her friend’s bed side for what will likely be the last time in this life. Ironically, I had Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Between Here and Gone” playing when she called. The last time I had been to Wolf Trap for a concert it was with this same friend and it was this CD and singer that was featured.
One of my favorite tracks from the CD is “My Heaven”. In it, Mary muses upon what her heaven will be like, and I like it. It’s not the heaven of the evangelical or the fundamentalist....it’s just the heaven where the rest of us will hopefully land.
MY HEAVEN
by Mary Chapin Carpenter
Nothing shatters nothing breaks
Nothing hurts and nothing aches
We've got ourselves one helluva place in my heaven
Looking down at the world below
A bunch of whining, fighting schmo's
Up here we've got none of those, in my heaven
There's pools and lakes and hills and mountains
Music, art, and lighted fountains
Who needs bucks here, no one's counting
In my heaven
No one works, we all just play
We pick the weather everyday
If you change your mind, that's ok, in my heaven
Grandma's up here, Grandpa too
In a condo with to-die-for views
There's presidents and movie stars
You just come as you are
No one's lost and no one's missing
No more parting just hugs and kissing
And all these stars are just for wishing
In my heaven
There's little white lights everywhere
Your childhood dog in Dad's old chair
And more memories than my heart can hold
When Eva's singing "Fields of Gold"
There's neighbors, theives and long lost lovers
Villains, poets, kings and mothers
Up here we forgive each other, in my heaven
For every soul that's down there waiting,
Holding on, still hesitating
We say a prayer of levitating, in my heaven
You can look back at your life and lot
But it can't matter what you're not
By the time you're here, we're all we've got
In my heaven
In my heaven
In my heaven
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