Wolff - Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven

Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience from Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero

In every mans life there are moments when there is a lifting of the veil at the horizon of the known, opening a sight of the eternal.

We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

My father lay dying after ninety-five full years. Family members kept vigil during those last days as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Dad spoke only twice. First he said: Well, Ive stopped trying to figure it all out. Then a day or two later he came round again and said: But the thing is, I dont know where to go from here.

My sister, keeping watch, replied: Straight ahead, Dad, straight ahead.

Straight ahead, yesbut where exactly? As years have passed, and friends and relatives have gone straight ahead, I find myself wondering where they might have gone.

I have always believed that our path through life does not end at death. And like all of us, I want to see friends and close family again. I especially want to drink a bottle of good red wine with my brother Bill, and see if weve figured anything out yet. I have both apologies and thanks for my parents, and would dearly love to meet Mary Magdalene and Rumi and William James and, dare I say, God.

But who am I to undertake a quest for life beyond this one, given the heroes and visionaries who have traveled there throughout the centuriesGilgamesh; Enoch; Julian of Norwich; Dante; Black Elk; the Buddha? I am neither heroine nor scholar, prophet, mystic, or priest. I am simply a woman with enough curiosity and faith, family and friends to sustain me in this effort. All visions of life beyond are reflections of the ideas and practice of a given culture and a given time, but thanks to my moment in history, I can explore both historical and contemporary belief.

This book is not a comprehensive history of how humans have sought life beyondsuch a thing would be impossible. Rather, it is a record of my own search for knowledge and hope for continued life. I have drawn from many fieldstheology and history, anthropology and psychologyto understand the beliefs of individuals, communities, and faiths. I have learned a great deal from scholars, but their theories and explanations are framed by the limits of their fields, and by their own interest or personal engagement. Thus I came to rely on believers for my sense of how we think about life beyond life.

There were as many views as there were believers. Some might see this lack of uniformity as an indication that faith traditions are losing their appeal and their authority. But I suspect that if I had been working in the third or the fifteenth century, I would have found a similar range of speculation and belief. And the very fact that I could find so many people willing to share their visions with me, in what is a fast-paced, intellectually sophisticated, highly secular environment, is testimony to the continuing relevance and vitality of our quest for life beyond our earthly existence.

Part I

IN THE BEGINNING