A Hope of Heaven

I recently saw an ad for the latest Planet of the Apes movie and it made me think about the odd things that we don't think of as odd.

I was taught creationism and evolution in the same breath and never gave a second thought to the fact that the theories contradicted themselves. Heaven at the right hand of God and the prospect of nothingness except maybe becoming fish food, never posed a problem for me and now I find myself wondering why. One is faith and one is science, surely both can't be right, yet I never questioned either.

I stopped going to church as soon as I was in college and free of my raising, convinced then as I am now, that it takes more than hallelujahs and holy water to make a believer, more than walls and altars to make a church. There's too much organization and too little religion in organized religion - God may be busier than usual on Sundays but He isn't one to take the rest of the week off - His eye is on the sparrow and everywhere else as well and I suspect He never really sleeps despite the most demanding of schedules and a shortage of good help. Hell may be no more than an eternity - a concept in and of itself that I've never managed to fully latch onto - of sleepless nights and unanswered questions or a true pit of fire and brimstone and endless regret, I really have no idea. And that being said, at the very same moment I say a small prayer for strength or of gratitude, I can think of evolution, wondering if we came to be according to Darwin, then where did the primordial ooze come from. I hate these moments and loose ends and would much rather go back to the child who saw no conflict in a dual belief system. Philosophical conflict is far too complicated to contemplate for much beyond a few seconds - I am a woman who has trouble choosing what cookies to buy.

Now and again, usually at idle moments at stop lights, I look up and see the sky and have the dimmest kind of realization that it isn't really a ceiling but more than that I cannot do. Cosmic thoughts are like seeing shadows in the rain, for just a hundredth of an instant I can almost make them out, then they evaporate. There are things in the world - the world itself, for instance - that are too immense to comprehend. A tiny part of me can watch pictures taken from space and know that the earth is round but most of me can't make the connection.

In the end, God wins - I need a balance to the impossibility of life and the cruelty. I need a hope of heaven.