Pauline told a lovely story tonight in housegroup…

She was talking to her 5 year old grandson, and the conversation went something like this-

“Nana- you know that place that you go to when you die?”

Pauline thought for a while, and just to test his understanding asked “What place do you mean?”

“Heaven” said he.

“Oh yes” said Pauline- what about it?”

“Well, what about the other place?”

Now we have been talking a lot about the concept of hell- where it all come from, and what we might understand by this. The whole Zoroastrian import into Judaism, filtered through non-dual interpretations of the Bible, and bashed about by Evangelical fundamentalism.  It has left us with a lot of question marks (as discussed in a few recent posts!) but Pauline’s immediate problem was the immanent possibility of having to reproduce all this into some kind of meaningful story for a 5 year old.

She chickened out a little, and asked “What place do you mean?”

“That place where they put the dead bodies” he said.

At this point, Pauline was wondering exactly where he was going . “Do you mean the graveyard?” she asked.

“Yes” said he. “How can you go to heaven if they put soil on top of you?”

A question indeed to conjure with. Pauline’s answer, I think, was rather good. She asked him to think about the bit of him deep inside that looked outside- and suggested that this bit lived for ever, but only the outside bit goes into the ground.

“Oh” he said “So it is just all skin under the ground then?”

He’s got it thought Pauline. “I suppose so.” she said. But then he thought for a little while longer and added-

“And all the bones and things go up to heaven.”

Well it is all a bit of a mystery for all of us really…