wanting

have you ever tried to imagine heaven? i've always heard that the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard the glory in God's word. still, i remember listening to the descriptions of heaven from many a preacher. they talked of streets paved of gold, of buildings built of rubies and emeralds. in my young mind, i thought of hollywood and the taj mahal. later, my version of heaven had purple oceans washing up on grey beaches, with big black skelatol trees and black skies, and big square buildings. i wanted structure and plans and concrete. always concrete.

more recently, i realized my vision of heaven had at some point shifted and then changed completely. now when i think of heaven i think of a rainy day and the wind in my face. that's today. tomorrow i'm sure i'll imagine something else. maybe structure, again. i don't know.

i remember my father saying to me once that he imagined heaven would be alot of sitting around doing nothing and that that didn't appeal to him at all. it's hard enough to stick with the discipline of our faith without not being over joyed at our misconception of the reward. i think i've had the same problem. sometimes i imagine that the believers will all be there, like some big social gathering. and that doesn't appeal to me at all. anyone who knows me can tell you social gatherings start wearing on my nerves after about half an hour and then i start seeking to be my namesake. a ghost.

i suppose what i truly want is flexibility and i want heaven to change with me, according to what i want. wait, that's not true either. what i really want is to be alive. i want life, bright, pulsing, and absorbing me. i don't truly want what i want. i never have. i don't want concrete buildings or wind in my face. i want busy freeways and i want abandoned roads. i want confrontation and a certain amount of strife. i want strangers and lovers and people i will never meet passing by. i want to teach and to learn and to hate and to feel. i want to feel.

heaven according to all i've been told by all those preachers over all these years could never be like that. heaven could never imitate real life. as tired as i get, i, deep down inside, and you, deep down inside in those places you don't really wanna look, like the struggle to make life mean something before death.

i associate heaven with death. and that's not what i want. peace isn't what i want. i want the struggle, the difficulty, the joy, the pain, the rapture, everything. i want everything. i want to live.