Holy Jesus

[smokingboot]

A well meaning friend has just put a poem up on my wall about how people who die have not gone, they are just in heaven and near us all the time.

All the time! My father near us all the time!

Of course the poster didn't know, and nothing is ever accurate anyway. What matters is the kind feeling behind it, which I greatly appreciate.

Still, I might read the poem out to my brother just to watch his face.

Comments

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of bad theology in the belief that someone hits heaven immediately. I don't at all mind the idea of the dead praying for us but no one wants to be watched.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I guess it's the comfort of it, that sense of a dear one acknowledged and immortalised in eternal bliss. Theology gets lost in an idea of perfection, deserved or obtained anyway. No-one wants to say 'Well, actually he was a bit of a you-know, and might not have got an automatic pass to paradise...' Death makes everyone a hero or a saint, and love is in the eye of the beholder.

Ironically Dad might have been as ferocious as Brighton Rock's Pinkie on this matter when he was young. But things change. To someone deeply flawed, brought up Roman Catholic in deep and uncompromising fashion, the hope of purgatory might be a chastening relief.