In search for heaven in dark places
By: Wouter, Θωμάς, Van Der Toorn
Tags: Heaven, Pandemic, Church, Community, Spirituality

When the Corona pandemic started and we were less able to get together, my friend Joris and I came up with a plan to gather some people to get closer. We started an online church.

Joris is a neighbourhood pastor in Rotterdam and, despite everything, I am still a wanderer in God’s beautiful world. It is very common for churches and places of worship to fill up when a crisis occurs somewhere. When there is an illness when uncertainty strikes, when death knocks at the door, the priest or the pastor can be found easily and they will be there for you. Because it seems to be felt that the earthly staff of the heavenly headquarters knows just a little more how to deal with the misery of life. And if they don’t know, then there are ancient rituals that help us find something to hold on to. Or we find hope to keep us steady.

But in this crisis also the churches are closed or just opened with many many limitations.

Not one-way traffic

In these times of a pandemic, the churches put a nice camera viewing the pastor and the revival bands who are trying to make the best of it. The organ player and the choir are giving their all, but it remains a one-way street.

You know they have said you can feel most lonely in a busy city centre or in a crowded church? Well, you’ve probably experienced little or none of both in the past few months because of the same pandemic, but you get the thing. You can still have such a fancy church video-stream, how do you bridge the physical and emotional distance? How can you look each other (digitally) in the eye?

Drink a beer online

This was the idea behind our online neighbourhood church: let’s organize a meeting online where you can meet each other just as you have a chat with a beer during a Friday afternoon drink. Our goal is that we share life in all it’s aspects, paying attention to each other and find inspiration. There are some liturgical parts. Very simple: lighting a candle at the beginning and ending with the Lords’ prayer when we finish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2sHTlhLzkQ

Being different but also one

During this month’s we became a special online community. I’m closely connected with people I never met in person. We share life, we crack some jokes, we drink our own beer. We share the highs and lows of our life, we share what bothers us and what we hope for.

I even conducted a remembrance service for a participant who passed away. She suffered from a brain tumour and her husband asked us to serve him with this special request. With some members, we text quite a bit in between our weekly meetings. And we are a bit of everything. We are seekers, committed believers, Christians without church, spirituals, Buddhists, atheists.

And it works. It has become a home for a small group of people. They call it their home. And maybe it’s because we don’t just inspire each other. We also share everything about our life. Not just the joy, the nappy part. But also the sad stuff, our struggles.

In the search for heaven

During one of our recent meetings, we asked each other for what we are grateful. And I don’t know exactly what happened, but I realized that I personally am always looking for heaven. Heaven is a pretty vague description of where things are good and that which will always hold value. It is what humanity hopes for. But how can you get there?

Unconsciously I am always looking in the shadows. Somewhere there the entrance of heaven is hidden I believe. The door must be in the dark. Maybe that’s why I regularly find myself in the dark side of my mind and I also am looking for it, for that dark side.

Live in peace with your own soul; then heaven and earth will live in peace with you. Enter the treasury within you with fervour and you will see what is in Heaven. Because there is one access to both. The ladder that leads to the kingdom is hidden in the soul. Therefore flee from sin, descend into yourself. In your soul, you will find the stairs on which you can climb up. ~ Monk Isaac of Nineveh (died ca.700 AD)

There is beauty in the shadow

Artists, writers and performers will recognize that beauty can certainly be found in the shadows of life. Hope is also about beauty!

If you know the life of Jesus, you will recognize it in his life too. He stepped into the misery that befell others. He became friends with people who did not fit into the box “as it should”. And he also explained that heaven is there when a thirsty person gets some water, a hungry person gets food, when some naked person is dressed, a sick person is taken care of and you visit a criminal.

Heaven isn’t perfect, but it is

I still imagine that there may be sick people in heaven, but they are being cared for. That there is still grief, but also that there are comfort and attention. I suspect that in heaven we still have to exert ourselves and work through frustration and pain because that is what makes us grow, how we become stronger, and how we learn. And that there are also shadows because then we can help each other with the light that is within us.

I suspect that heaven is not a reality we should hope for later, so where we end up after we die. But that heaven is here. As long as we don’t fear the dark anymore.