I have been at the threshold. More than once. There aren’t gates but there is an entrance, a doorway. There are the most wonderful creatures inside. People I recognize. People I have never met, but feel instinctively drawn to. It is a very earthy place; not sterile and white at all. There is dirt and mud and funk. The sun shines. Plants grow long and lush.

But for some reason, many times I have resisted walking through. Maybe because I was afraid it wouldn’t be as good as I had hoped, but I think mostly because I enjoyed the anticipation. I like to sit just outside the door, maybe chat with some of the people inside. There is a shiny black labrador there, and she seems to recognize me. She wags her tail when she sees me, jumps up and lets me scratch behind her ear. We play around, but she always wants me to come in. I can rarely coax her out.

So I wait here, at the threshold. It’s comfortable enough; there is food, a bed. Books to read. I visit with people on their way in. They seem to accept me as some sort of unofficial receptionist. I look up and smile hopefully, and some of them chat for a while. Some ask why I don’t cross over. Others just smile and walk through. They leave me.

Other times people actually sit down and visit. The view is pleasant, the earth smells good, and it’s really not such a bad place to be. Just outside of heaven is not hell. Far from it. There’s some residual heaven out here; it’s just inevitable. It spills out.

Sometimes I think they have the same issues as me, though, the ones that stay. They’re afraid too. Some even want to draw me further away, and that is where I can get myself into trouble. Mostly, I’ve gotten better at keeping myself close to that source.

This waiting around outside the door, though, it can become an occupation. I get used to it. I sit down, eat a meal, I get sleepy. I say to myself, It’s not so bad to wait here, is it? Besides, It’ll be there tomorrow… and then I fall asleep just outside paradise, like Dorothy did within view of her Emerald City. I sleep through the night.

But when I wake up the next day the door is gone! Branches and vines grew up and covered it. Or maybe I wandered a little too far last night and got lost… I don’t know. I could swear I laid myself down right near the entrance. But I lost it.

So now here I go, running frantically to find the door again. I cut myself on a branch, twist my ankle, but I don’t care. It’s one thing to live just outside that door, with the promise of what’s inside so close to me. To lose it entirely, that is another thing, one I can’t live with.

Then I find it.

I stop, lean forward to catch my breath with my hands on my knees. But I’m already calming down, getting my confidence back. I recognize the doorway, the view inside, the earthy smell. The vibe I get when I’m out here, close to this beautiful place. There’s a woman this time, just inside the entrance. She’s brown skinned, with features that suggest she is Indian, or maybe Pakistani. She smiles at me.

“You’re Tristan.”
“Yeah… . This is still heaven, right?”
She laughs.
“This is still heaven. When are you going to come inside?”

It’s a great question, and the truth is I almost bolted right through the door in my hurry. But I’ve found it again. My heart beat slows, relief floods my body. There’s no reason to hurry…

“I can still come through anytime I want, right?” I ask her.

She smiles, shakes her head.

“Of course. But why don’t you come in today? We’re having a party tonight and we want you to play for us. Plus I’m going away tomorrow and I need someone to take care of my place for a few weeks. Maybe longer.”

“Really?” I ask her.

“Mm hmm. Dolphins swim up to the dock every day outside my house, and I need someone there to visit with them tomorrow. They like sardines in the afternoon.”

My heartbeat spikes.

“You live on the ocean?” I ask her, breathlessly.
“Yes I do.”
“I could… feed them?”
She smiles again. “They would appreciate it.”
“Do they like… chirp and stuff? Make those sounds?”
She laughs.

“Yes they do.” Her speech has that effervescent quality I recognize when Indians speak English. It has laughter behind it.
“Could I dive in and swim with them?” I ask this one anxiously, afraid she might say no.
“Absolutely.” She says. “They would love that. As long as you don’t forget to feed them the fish!”

Something about the way this woman smiles. Or maybe it’s because she gave me an actual job to do, something tangible.

I walk through.

The first thing I realize, as soon as I get in and start making plans, meeting people and starting a life, is that waiting outside was silly because walking through is not an ending, it’s a beginning. It’s a process and it’s relationship driven, so the sooner you get started the better. This place isn’t lily white with everyone floating around with inane expressions on their faces. Paradise is not a static thing. We all have plans, and there is much to be done.

So here I am. This is where I live now, and it’s more beautiful every day. There is much to discover here and much to learn. Many of us spend time developing our hidden talents. Like flying. I find I am fascinated with the real story behind things, and this is the place where I can get it. I meet people I knew from my life before, and we marvel at how bad things sometimes got and how unnecessary that was; how at the worst moments in our former lives we had the answers all the time, right there waiting. We agree that the times when we laughed were the highest, the closest to where we are now. I’m still living at Sajani’s. She’s away a lot, but I love when she’s home because we laugh and make food together.

Sometimes I go back and find the doorway, only now that I’m on the inside, I have a vastly different perspective. I’m in a unique position to speak to the people hanging around outside, if there are any. They’re like I was. I tell them: it’s okay to be afraid. I was afraid, too. I tell them that once you step in, you’re lifted up on a rush of energy. You get carried off by it. It’s fun, but you have to learn to let go. You could walk back out anytime, if you wanted to.

The one thing I find common to almost everyone hanging around outside the entrance: they’re a little blurry. Their colors aren’t as bright, their eyes not as brilliant. They lack focus.

I tell them what I have learned: that the conditions do not have to be perfect in order for you to walk through; the conditions are always right. You begin improving them as soon as you step in. To believe otherwise is like saying, Well, I’ve been starving for close to a month now and someone just invited me to dinner, but I think I should put it off for a day or two. So I can get ready. It just doesn’t make sense. They invited you for tonight, and you’re hungry. Go.

In my opinion, the most profound thing anyone can realize here, the thing that each and every one of us will come back again and again until we learn, is that the separation between the everyday and the divine is a self-created one. It is a fiction. The place to create paradise is here, right now. There will never be a better one. I’ve found that the tendency to always put it ahead of us in space (up there) and in time (after I die, when I achieve this or that) is completely wrong. This is the place to do it. This is why we are here.

I live in the United States, and it appears to me that there are a good many people in power here in this country who believe heaven and God are outside of them. They believe heaven is “up there”, and that they can live the way they do, do the things they do, and yet die one day and go to this place. I have come to understand that this is a deeply mistaken belief. These are people who believe that the rape, degradation and exploitation attendant to dominator culture is how things have to be, that one day the Son of God will come down from the clouds and somehow make it all better. In truth they can stop waiting, because the Son of God has been waiting for them.

They say they believe in the words of Christ, but their actions indicate otherwise so clearly that I think they must be the most cynical people on the planet. They fail to understand something fundamental:

God is here right now. God is the animal suffering horribly in one of a bioweapons labs. God is an Afghan woman, an Iraqi child dying for lack of food and medicine.

Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.” And yet we have the torture and mistreatment of prisoners, we have systematic, dreadful cruelty to animals, we have economic exploitation of human beings in developing countries as a matter of policy. We have war profiteering. If only they could see: Christ is here already. They need not wait for him, he is waiting for them. They could reach their messiah instantly, through their own compassion and humanity. If only they could see.

We have shown indisputably that we can create hell on earth. Surely we can begin to create heaven.

Tristan L. Sullivan

www.tristanluke.com