I had my wisdom teeth removed when I was a teenager. I hadn't had my driver's license for very long, but I was eager to show off my independence so I drove myself to the appointment in our family's boxy yellow Fiat. The nurse looked at me. "The doctor says you have four impacted teeth. We will need to put you to sleep. Who do you have to drive you home after the procedure?"
I hadn't thought about that.
I explained that I had driven myself.
She told me to have a seat and she disappeared to consult. "You'll have to speak with the doctor about this" she said.
The oral surgeon looked at me skeptically and offered that it was possible to have local anesthesia for the operation. There would be lots of shots in the mouth and plenty of noise and violence during the extractions. I could tell that he wanted me to come back a different day, with some parental drivers.
I was young and naive and too brave for my own good.
"Let's do it."
The next hour was brutal. I never imagined you could have so many injections into gums and jaw. I never imagined how much they would hurt. I didn't realize how much debris flies around in and out of a person's mouth during the process of crushing and picking tooth fragments from unneeded wisdom teeth...and I wasn't expecting the sounds of battle ringing in my ears.
I survived and found myself driving home with a numb face.
As I pulled into my driveway I looked into the rear-view mirror, expecting to see my jaw swollen to twice its size.
I looked normal, except for a mouth brimming with blood. A little trickle was starting to run down the side of my face. I was impressed and shared the effect with my mother as I spit out a cup of blood into the bathroom sink.
The rest of the day was made tolerable by some white pills provided by the doctor. They were rich in a substance called codeine. A human body takes in codeine and the effect is similar to that of morphine, another drug isolated from the same poppy plants. I had never experienced significant doses of these drugs before, and within an hour I began to understand why addiction is possible.
I felt really good.
I lay on a couch in my basement for a long time. I didn't sleep. Instead, I looked at the basement ceiling. I looked at the ceiling tiles. I looked at the way the wall met at the ceiling to form a line. Then, wonder of wonders, I looked at how two walls met at the ceiling to form a point.
I was enthralled.
I think I spent literally four intoxicated hours studying that feature of the architecture of the basement, amazed that the great writers and artists and poets of history hadn't adequately treated this amazing phenomenon in their greatest works.
The corner held me mesmerized for hours...the power of drugs.
That night I went to sleep after a second dose of the magic white pills. I remember the night vividly to this day because it was the first time I dreamed in color.
Like many people, all my dreams are remembered in shades of grey. Not that night. I dreamed of flying high above buildings through gorgeous skies of blue and red, with lush green landscapes spread out below me.
Again, the power of drugs.
I never dreamed in color again, until a few weeks ago.
Unlike that teenage night so many years before, this day had been uneventful. There had been no codeine or other prescription drugs. My own daughters are now past their teenage years and have moved out. Driving myself around is no longer an accomplishment. I'm also less inclined to be brave.
But I dreamed in color.
It was a more amazing experience and a more important dream than the one I had so long ago. This dream was very different, very important. It was a kind of gift.
Now that I am 51 I think more about heaven.
Silly, I know, but still.
I believe in heaven. I know I will share that experience with Jesus, who died to forgive my sins and purchase togetherness forever.
What I don't know is anything else about it.
Maybe existence with Jesus Christ will be so overwhelming that its timeless joy will sweep into nothingness every joy I have yet experienced. Maybe my longing for the joys of this world, my wife, my human relationships, music, the glories of color and sensations is simply a misunderstanding of how vastly superseding will be intimacy with Jesus Christ.
Maybe.
Once, long ago, Jesus was challenged by some of his many detractors to explain how a conscious afterlife would work. How does a continuation of earthly joy play out?
Eugene Peterson's Bible translation (The Message) tells the story from the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 22) this way:
That same day, Sadducees approached him. This is the party that denies any possibility of resurrection. They asked, "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies childless, his brother is obligated to marry his widow and get her with child. Here's a case where there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died, leaving no child, and his wife passed to his brother. The second brother also left her childless, then the third—and on and on, all seven. Eventually the wife died. Now here's our question: At the resurrection, whose wife is she? She was a wife to each of them."
Jesus answered, "You're off base on two counts: You don't know your Bibles, and you don't know how God works. At the resurrection we're beyond marriage. As with the angels, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding your speculation on whether the dead are raised or not, don't you read your Bibles? The grammar is clear: God says, 'I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.' The living God defines himself not as the God of dead men, but of the living." Hearing this exchange the crowd was much impressed.
"... all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God"
These are profoundly beautiful words.
Maybe heaven will then be beyond the kinds of sensations we now know. Maybe my very most beautiful earthly experiences of love and empathy and joy will be like walking on a foggy day—the feeling of water as humid air does nothing to prepare us for the feeling of water when we swim.
My reasoning and my study of Jesus' words tell me not to try to comprehend what living with God will be like.
But I still have been wondering more about heaven.
And so I will never forget the second time I dreamed in color.
There were no drugs to explain the experience this time—it was a kind of gift.
I was asleep in the middle of the night but became aware that I was beginning to have color vision. It lasted for only a few seconds, and it was only one scene, but it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. What is remarkable is that I consciously felt myself opening my eyes in amazement, an experience of wakefulness even within the dream.
My vision was downward onto a patch of ground before me. In an instant I was given the overwhelming sense that I was seeing something of heaven. The impression was so clear, yet there were no words.
Immediately before my eyes, as if I was kneeling and looking closely at the ground, was a bright patch of forest floor, dappled in sun as one would see on an early fall day when trees are mostly bare. I stared. There on the ground were beautiful fallen leaves of many vivid colors, stirring in a gentle breeze.
Sensing my eyes wide open even in my dream, I looked closer. I perceived a loving message—that seasons and cycles and colors and experiences...and life...continue in this place where I will know my Lord even as he now knows me.
And then I saw something small and simple and unexpected.
There between two fallen leaves before me I saw a tiny beetle wander across the heavenly ground.
The scene faded peacefully, a gift.
As I woke in the darkness of my bedroom, my wife sleeping next to me, I found myself crying.
2.12
