Monday 2 June 2003

Pic of the day: The road into brilliance ... it is hard to see far ahead, but the steps right before you are clear enough.

Brilliant road

My digestion was upset in the morning and for a while, but improved as the day went by. I took a walk around the neighborhood in the late afternoon.

The heat is on, even here in Norway. It is so hot outside that you could go without clothes, but not quite too hot to wear them, especially on the hilltops where the wind is strong. The wind is filled with the smell of honey and pollen, but only a few bees are out and about in the sudden summer. The road winds through a neighborhood built in the middle of the wilderness, and homes and gardens are interspersed with trees that were never cut. Each garden is unlike the next, each home different from the others. Some gardens blend with the wilderness so they are like patches of flowers in the forest; others are like fortified islands of civilization in a raging sea of primordial chaos. Yet they are all beautiful, and the remaining forest too.

As I walk, I listen to Brilliant Road on my earphones (that's the intro song to the anime Stellvia, and an extremely uplifting song too). The beauty of the sound, sight and smell squeezes me against the ropes of pleasure overload, as if my heart and my lungs were ready to burst. My body strains to contain myself from screaming with joy and pleasure. And I find myself thinking that I wish it could go on forever. I wish Paradise would be like this, the New Earth, the final release of real life that we fans are waiting for while living the beta.

(For some reason, it seems almost only Jehovah's Witnesses want to go to the New Earth, but then again they want it badly. Most Christians seem to think they can go to Heaven. That is certainly over-optimistic, to say the least. Heaven is for those who don't even have legitimate, innocent wishes in the material world, those whose only pleasures are spiritual. Most people like things in the world, or if not, hate things in the world. Precious few are those who do not care, whose minds are only filled with the presence of God, as the Christ said: "My food is to do his will who sent me." Him about that ... I certainly like food. Thus, no Heaven for me. But the New Earth sounds good, if it is anything like what I saw today.)

In reality, of course, Paradise is very much in the heart of the beholder. A bit later I passed an attractively posed neighborhood wife, and remind myself that there can be no true paradise as long as there is misguided desire: Lust, greed, envy, and their followers anger and fear. That's the big deal. Once we can all be friends and want the best for each other, the rest of paradise is just filling in the dots. But even the great King David, a man according to God's heart, could not pull himself away from the sight of his neighbor's wife, and brought heartbreak on himself. All his riches, all his power, all the blessings of the past could not save him once he put his foot on the first step down that dark road. Only after much sorrow and shame did he once again return to the brightly lit road to Paradise.

I reflected on this. I opened my clenched hands and walked on, up another hill, listening to the music.

I beat my invisible wings: Fly higher!
I picture dreams because I was born human.
Look up at a sky full of stars,
fly away on the brilliant road to tomorrow!

(From Brilliant Road, as translated by Rice-Box.)