Frankly, through my long and continuing reassessment of spiritual things, the whole idea of living the present life as a downpayment for a "reward" after life seems stupider to me all the time.

The Christians out there who are looking for signs of the Second Coming (a brainchild of Paul and John the Divine, btw) have ignored the First Coming. Jesus, who I admire more than I can say, pointed out consistently that we live in the Kingdom of God already, right here, right now. It contains everything, just as the mythological constructs do, only all mixed together. Our choice is to live now firmly grounded in the Kingdom in appreciation of its terrible beauty, or to defer living until some supposed future existence, like the idiot in the parable who buried the gold his master gave him to keep it safe instead of making the most of it in the here and now.

His master cursed him for his stupidity.

We can't know the Whole Truth, because we only have our little ape brains, our little ape senses, and the tools that we devise to extend all of that. We can pursue small truths with science, and to our credit, we often do, but then we confuse these snippets with pieces of another whole puzzle, one that doesn't respond to scientific method. Indeed, when the pieces don't fit, hammers have been applied to make them fit better. The revealed Truth as represented by religion only works to shore up temporal authority through fear on the one hand, or to comfort with ritual and give us a script, a backstory, a collective mythos, to talk together about the hard and terrible parts of the Kingdom on the other.

I believe we don't give the Kingdom enough attention, as we are looking for its ideal mirror image elsewhere, or we are so convinced that that which we can sense and measure is all there is. I also believe that we don't give our unconscious minds enough room to play. For apes, we're pretty subtle; many insights come from the non-rational intelligence that we contact most often in dreams. Orangutans know physics quite well: they use it effortlessly to swing from tree to tree, but they can't explain it. So with us. Through our dreams and our arts, we contact that inarticulate, nonlogical part which understands bits and pieces of that other puzzle.

Of everything religion has given us, these two are the most worthwhile: the ritual and metaphor that allows us to turn off the Voice of the Analyst so we can just be in the Kingdom, and the metaphor of a common story that helps us to talk together and be with each other so that all our small hearts can grow larger, together.

I've been looking at video of that wave. Have you noticed how magnificent it is? It swept many of us away like butterflies in a gale, and our world is poorer because of the lives we value that were lost, but it was nevertheless an awesome thing on its own. Shall we be repulsed by it, or shall we take inspiration from its power and strength to pour ourselves out like the sea, in reply to the sea of sorrow whose distant waves crash on our shores?

The Kingdom is ours. We can try to make it Heaven, and it will be a joy to live in, if bittersweet because we have to leave it one day. We can kiss off others' suffering and make it more like Hell if we feel like it. But it will always be what it is, beyond our poor power to add or subtract: majestic, beautiful, and unconcerned with us. The only ones in the Kingdom whom we know are concerned with us are we ourselves. That's where Heaven and Hell come from.

Is there Salvation? Is Someone "looking out" for us? Will we be rewarded or punished after we die? Who cares? We can give each other peace right here, right now, and for that mercy, we can reap peace for ourselves.