Topic
Heaven arrives in this collection as both theological destination and metaphor for the best things available now. Shaw's happy-family-as-earlier-heaven is the most radical secularization: you do not need to wait for it. Calvin on sending your wealth to your country of heaven rather than retaining it here is the theological instruction that has generated more discomfort in rich congregations than almost any other. Tagore on trees speaking to the listening heaven is the most poetic entry: heaven is not above but attentive. Plato on the madness of love as heaven's greatest blessing restores the pre-Christian account: the highest state available to humans is not theological but erotic. Lincoln on marriage as purgatory situates heaven between the comic and the theological with his characteristic timing. Plautus on the friend who is truly a friend — nothing but heaven itself is better — gives the concept its most practical translation. Heaven in this collection is less a place than a quality of relation — to time, to love, to other people, to the things that outlast any individual life.