Sylvanna Devlin

When we imagine heaven we tend to think of green open fields and a pleasant sky, maybe standing on fluffy white clouds, but most of us see green. This view is likely a hint into Al-Sama-Al-Danya the first level of heaven.

This mental image is rooted in our psyches. Healthy green environments have food maybe even safety. Perhaps the historical garden of Eden was a place of plenty and protection at the base of the Tigre’s and Euphrates where a lake now sits.

An Exodus from the garden would seem like punishment and story of a flood and all the animals running beside us would heavily inform our mythology.

The story of Eve would be the gatherer who dropped a seed and noticed it grew, Adam would have tilled the soil curious if this “seed” theory was true. The first scientists.

If the Garden of Eden is in our Pysches as a sense of home we long for, perhaps we can imagine the first level of heaven. A place of going home. Maybe each of us walk steps informed by our imagination of a home to go to.

In my case cold stone steps on a wet winter day leading up to a simple door. Inside a window to brilliant Christmas tree and welcoming friends. A sense of home permeating through the large green door. It looked warm and initiating and is the closest one comes to receiving notice of what is will look like when they first enter heaven – our attachment to the visual world shaping all we see and who we meet.

The idea of “Home” and wanting to go there for me is heavily influenced by moving around so much I didn’t really feel that anywhere. I certainly felt that way about my childhood in idyllic rural Lancashire. But heaven and perfection, the glow of gold light and open fields to play in, is very different for a child. My sister wasn’t as happy.

It was a real place and a real time I tried to return to and much of my family grieved, but it just isn’t the same anymore and really I would never be as happy as that child playing in the local stream. It wasn’t really Al-Sama-Al-Danya but my memory and yearn for such innocence and verdant surroundings made the sense of that door seem all the more magnetic. Am I home yet?

Some see stairs, some a golden ladder. We can not really imagine the full truth of a place of healing but we can feel it calling to us. The wronged who commit suicide out of loss often end there. If they find freedom in death. Otherwise the weeping soul will take you to purgatory to wait before you try again, if Allah is kind you try again right away and that can be unappealing to many.

When else do we feel such safety beyond emotional intimacy? Perhaps that is why we are so loved crazed and really hunt out the safety and vulnerability of sexual encounters that go beyond general rutting.

I have certainly heard the joke that sleeping with the right partner is “going to Nirvana” and the right interaction can indeed be so emotional, so connected, so life affirming some of us wonder why anyone bothers without. A Demisexual for you I suppose.

If you haven’t moved around so much, or felt such intimacy, or walked the steps up, the end can seem intimidating and out of reach. Certainly we must earn passage up with a good life and what that is has many religions guiding us to the same place. All are the hands of god. Catholic, Orthodox, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism will certainly get you there. Maybe Hindi too though I know little of those traditions. But the guidance for what it means to be good is there.

If you need it. Some atheists are born with a moral compass that does not stray. You can be a good person without praying to god. But the community and the path there. And is just a little easier to take if you accept things moving around my room on there own are a sign there’s another world we don’t see.

Nothing will take you to Allah’s bosom faster than tragedy, but nothing can strip you of him just as quickly as the same. He will reach out a hand, and if you reach back and walk towards it, he will take it and pull you closer. Just don’t let go.