Now Go And Make A Joyful Noise!

One of the things about the Christian God that is no obliviously ridiculous, is the insistence of fundamentalists that God is all loving. God IS love. If this is true, then there can be no "punishment" of people in the after life. Unless of course you believe that God would burn your body eternally while also petting your head and saying how much he loves while you suffer endlessly, on and on and on forever. Sounds like an abusive husband to me.

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Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down! That the mountains would quake at your presence—Isaiah 64:1

Now Go And Make A Joyful Noise

It’s okay, that knot of wickedness in your throat, that evil screw in your belly forever twisting; it’s okay that mean shellac of armor around your heart. It’s okay the hunger, the taste for innocent neck, the taste for blood in the oily waters; it’s okay your need to burrow, to hide, to pull all your treasures in after you, plugging the mouth of your cave.

Welcome to the new church, welcome to the new playing field, welcome to the promised land where everyone can’t seem to stop smiling, waving their hands in the air, jumping up and down. Where everyone eats nothing but wedding cake and giant strawberries, air-spun mounds of nougat; where everyone drinks an entire river of wine before breakfast.

In this new heaven, everyone sits atop the clouds and whistles across the waves of light—symphonies, waltzes, folk tunes and country classics, hymns to the stars, ballads to the dreamy-eyed and rainbowed horses.

Here everyone does their chores—makes the beds, separates the recyclables into organized piles, folds the linens, polishes the silver; everyone will dig a ditch or hoe a row of corn; and everyone’s hygiene is beyond reproach--everybody always flosses their teeth and scrubs away the soil under their fingernails.

All people of the new heaven know their duty; they place their right hands above their hearts and pledge eternal happiness; they solemnly swear the eternal pledge to give back fire whenever some god offers it to us.

Welcome to the new paradigm of paradise! 

All who pass through these gates--good or bad, angry or in anguish, mad or possessed, broken or possessing a body sound of mind and heart—all are picked up and cradled like babies, all are thrown into the deep end of the pool, all walk beside the gods in the fields or spend entire afternoons blowing bubbles and chasing them around the yard. Meek, proud, robust, or ego beaten to a sorry pulp, all will come into the cities with their perfectly-tuned voices glory hallelujahing! it everywhere they go.

It matters not that you’re rotten, eaten up with moths and silverfish. You, too, will be welcomed in. The gods will come and suckle your gnashing little mouths, the gods will horse-train the mad-dash careening ridiculousness out of your puffed up chests, your thrust up chins; they will gentle down the whole lot of you toddlers passing off as men, for the gig is entirely up, there is no place here for your hardened hearts, and if it takes forever and always, these gods will soften you.

These gods will extract every bit of the suffering from your heart, suffering only the truly evil can feel; they will unravel the layers of pride and hurt and yearning and infection until the nubs of your hearts are revealed and they will lay your hearts atop their hearts until you are able to feel the love that has always been holding the gate open for you, always been at hand to pull you up from the mired up places you’ve long since chosen to live.

Then you formerly evil-hearted nincompoops will rise up and walk onto these streets of gold, wade through the confetti and the bouncing balloons, feel your new hearts growing. Reach out and touch each thing you pass—newborns, bistros, eagles, kangaroos, opera singers, elevators, ballerinas, petunias, mimes, monkey-faced pansies, concert halls, and long-abandoned churches.  Touch everything, for everything is a part of you.

And at last you will climb up the rungs of gold and reach up your hands to touch the ceiling of the sky. Then let go and fly across the universe, laughing as you go, declaring I am a new thing, I am washed as clean the little lamb's wool. I am love, I am love at last.