Heaven

John Scalzi at the AOL mothership blog has challenged us to weigh in on yet another Big Topic - Heaven, in this case.

As an ex-smoker, one thing I'm looking forward to in Heaven, should I make it there, is to living for eternity in the smoking section. Non-smokers can come over to visit if they want. Or they can instant-message me on their cell phones and send pictures.

Actually, I've often hoped that in Heaven I would get a place on a deserted desert island with an angel who looks a lot like Nastassja Kinski. But I would probably have to work on my karma through several more incarnations to rate that.  (There's a scene early in Wim Wenders' Far Away ... So Close where a dying man's head is cradled by an angel - played by Nastassja Kinsky. I can hope, can't I?)

The real point of Christian beliefs about the afterlife though is to emphasize the importance of life in this world and of doing our best to get it right. Jimmie Rodgers captured this aspect of it in a song called "Hobo's Meditation", in which a homeless man "riding the rails" as a hobo thinks about it in a way that contrasts his hope for a better life with the bitterness of existing conditions:

Has the Master up yonder in Heaven
Got a place where we might call our home?
Will we have to work for a living
Or can we continue to roam?

Will there be any freight trains in Heaven
Any box cars in which we might hide?
Will there be any tough cops or brakemen?
Will they tell us we cannot ride?

Will the hobo chum with the rich man?
Will he always have money to spare?
Will they have respect for the hobo
In the Land that lies hidden up there?