SleepingOrchid

Paradise = BLISS “Ecstasy”

Everyone’s Paradise is different. For some it will be just like church, for others it’s an eternal “fish-fry”.(Green Pastures.)

Some people say it will be a place without animals, enemies, insects or unbelievers, others say it will be just like Earth. Some think it’s an endless loving embrace, others say a “roll in the hay” with “70 virgins.” (Imagine that being appealing!)

These ideas are understandably small and based on limited and very individual human knowledge. This makes Paradise a mental construct; some kind of an existence of all joy and no pain. We can almost barely imagine that. What we can’t seem to imagine is a Paradise where all participate; in other words, how can we feel joy if “wrong thoughts”, “impure behaviors” and “bad people” are rewarded?

Jesus was asked this question and his answer sounds suspiciously like “get over it.” He told a long story about toilers in the vineyards paid the same amount no matter how late they showed up, just because the owner was so full of generosity and joy.

Something to think about. I personally like the idea that Paradise is a place where “every tear will be wiped away.”(Revelation)

Once we have faced our personal inadequacies, admitted the power of our global longing and contemplated the possibility of severance, are we ready to surrender to bliss? The Paradise card guarantees to us that ecstasy is coming. But what is ecstasy – how uncomfortable will it be and how will we recognize it? Ecstasy is the blurring of our boundaries into the beloved. Time vanishes, there is only the ecstatic present. You have experienced this before. Disappearing in to the safety of a loving parent’s arms you felt connected to them in a galvanic way – you and they were part of each other’s being. This is the connection Jesus offered when he called God “Daddy.”

A mature connection with the Beloved is even more powerful, because we get to be both parent and child, recipient and giver, all at once and in the same moment. What joy!

Paradise

Without eyes

Ambitious goldfish float

Dream of skies

Where fins are wings

Lily pads are clouds

Swollen tight

as seed pearls; gullets

Safe forever from

vengeful squid or

Killer waves.

Who can say if in their time of death

Those dreams don’t live

Bursting skin; comet tails

Scatter scales like stars

Spilling pond and soaring limitless

To be whales

To be gods

To be free?