This is a well deserved honor for this beautiful essay. I'm glad you decided to share your essay. It is beautiful. My mother died when I was a child, so I have written many times about death but not yet about heaven. I give hugs to my friends too, especially when I think one might bring some cheer to a rough day.
Hugs are warmth to the heart.
Again, your essay is wonderful. I felt proud and happy that the gardens of Kees and myself could make the visitors forget the troubled world and lose themselves in the soothing, calming and exciting experience of walking our garden paths. It is dangerous for a Sunday school teacher to tell children's stories which provoke more discussion than the minister's sermons, at least that is what a parishioners just told me recently. Funny thing, this is the first church which I have attended where hugging is the rule of the day any day, so to fit into the communinity, I started doing it as well and found out that I liked it. The minister himself did as much hugging as anyone, but he only hugs married women, not children.