I stood alone at the lectern of the River City Funeral Chapel looking out at the swelling ranks of mourners. Friends, family, and strangers packed the sanctuary and overflow room, and formed a line that snaked out into the parking lot (the director stopped counting at 400). The casket lay open and an uncanny radiance lit up the countless flowers arrangements spread across the stage.
I nodded at four men awaiting my signal and we retreated into the director’s office and closed the door. I fell into their arms—my men’s group of 15 years—and allowed myself to weep convulsively for two or three minutes. Then I pulled myself together, returned to the crowded chapel, put on my stole, and began a funeral service for my youngest son, Adam, killed in an automobile accident five long, anguished days earlier. It was the hardest service I will ever do, but I would not hand this assignment to another—this was my job.
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I have written recently (Finding Heaven Here, o-books, 2009) about the universal realization of Heaven on Earth described by the mystics from every tradition. They tell us that Heaven is already here when we’re awake enough to see it. The radiance of Heaven transforms the Earth into an infinitely beautiful and holy place when we learn to stop thinking, heighten awareness, and see the world transfigured in the divine Presence.
But where is Heaven when your son dies in an automobile accident? Where is Heaven when your heart feels broken beyond repair? Where is Heaven in the really hard times? Well, you know, it’s still here. Heaven never leaves. It surrounds us in grief and loss as well as joy and celebration. It holds us in our deepest pain.
It has now been one month since the funeral. Where is Heaven on Earth in this time of grief?
I see beauty everywhere, and it still hurts. I feel God’s Presence, and it still hurts. I know for certain that all is well, and it still hurts. I sit in the serenity of Divinity, and it still hurts. The experience of Heaven on Earth does not make grief go away; rather it draws me into a divine Consciousness in which I feel held, loved, understood, and reassured, and full of joy, even as I still hurt.
But there is more. In this Consciousness, I discover again that I have been a victim of the stories I tell. When I tell myself stories about separation and loss, about unfairness and suffering, I hurt. In the infinite silence of Eternity, as this chatter ceases, “I” disappear into the Consciousness and Being of Divinity and know beyond the shadow of a doubt that all is one, that no one is ever lost, and that Adam is as close to me as my breath.
My heart swells with an unconditional love that is more than my own, and I release the grief with immense relief, understanding, and joy. Then I know that I am not this pain, I am not this loss, rather, I am the Consciousness through which everything passes unaffected. I feel again the joy of Creation, and I am home.
Then, with a single thought (‘I’ll never see Adam again.”), grief returns and I must hold myself with this same vast love, as the little me learns how to let go, how to trust, how to be free. We are learning to live in the new consciousness of Heaven on Earth, and everything that happens—becomes an invitation to embrace it.
The night after Adam’s funeral, I met with my men’s group and again poured out my sorrow. I did so without embarrassment or shame, because these men know me and they know suffering. One had just returned from caring for his younger sister for two months during her slow, difficult, and terminal illness, living with her family five hundred miles from his home. Another man had lost two younger brothers and their father to heart attacks in the prior 18 months. Unthinkable. We have been together through so many hard times, and still we can laugh and hug and see our way through. This, too, is Heaven on Earth—a place where love has no bounds and includes everything in its healing grace.
As we were waiting for our plane to go home, my youngest daughter said, “Maybe this is a good time to tell you. I think I’ve found somebody. A man I work with. He adores me. No one has ever looked at me like this before.” Her announcement of love and renewal during our darkest moment reminded me, too, that Heaven is wherever love flourishes, and that it is still all around me, and Adam too.
