The world is coming to an end tomorrow according to the old git who founded Family Radio. His followers are entranced by the prospect of being swept up to heaven by celestial sprites. There they’re spend eternity worshiping their God. On their knees too. As a non-believer I prefer my heaven on earth. It’s fairly easy to find if you know where to look and I opened Firefox to the Google search engine.
The first three entries on the Google search engine for ‘heaven on earth’ are the Heaven on Earth Salon & Day Spa | Honolulu, Hawaii, Heaven on Earth weddings, and Britney Spears’ hit. None of those choices answered my perception of ‘heaven on earth’ so I went www.heavenonearth.org
This website proposed a multilevel approach to reaching a terrestrial nirvana; peace and security, freedom, democracies, prosperity, spiritual harmony, racial harmony, ecological soundness, health, and moral purpose and meaning.
Long lists tend to create dissent since different factions have varied illusions of heaven.
The Hassidim try to recreate their vision of heaven every Shabbath through prayer and devotion to their God. Mormons follow the teachings of Joseph Smith, a distant relative of mine, while the Wahhabist Muslims think of heaven as a garden with 77 virgins. I don’t need to be cockteased by the sexually uneducated, worship Yahweh in a temple or marry a multitude of wives. Instead I seek to attain a simpler Eden as prescribed the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
These words were written in Persian over 1000 years ago.
I have traveled around the world. People ask, “What makes you live somewhere?”
“Good food, beautiful women, a nice climate, and cheap wine.”
The rest of it; SUVs, MacMansions, Plasma TVs, and fast food, are only delusions.
Heaven is as simple as facing the sun to feel its warmth, but then that’s me.
Wine, woman, my children, song, and a room with a view.
In the end I am a simple man