Storytelling Week 13: Dante's Heaven

I follow behind my guide of Heaven only thinking one thing. am I dead? I keep asking the person I am following but they never seem to answer me straight only saying things like "Until your time" or "Patience, my son".

The gates are beautiful, composed of what appears to be solid gold and platinum and topped with magnificent priceless pearls. The ground appears to be in the form of a typical sidewalk, but also composed entirely from gold.

After walking around using the clouds and golden pavements as my ground, I get a detailed tour of all the neighborhoods while my guide explains to me "these people have houses whose sizes are directly proportional to all the good they have done in their entire lives..." I cannot help but think how small mine must be if I am in the right place and belong in Heaven.

Approaching Heaven, Source

I finally get to the God himself. The person I have followed this whole turns around to show me their face just before meeting God. I cannot see anything but a great beam of light coming from where a face should be. Their robes appear to be hanging in mid air as I finally see I have been following an entity with no physical body this entire time.

I am not scared, but curiously interested in the being I have been following. Before I can say anything, the being is gone and I stand alone in front of God trembling. I am at a lost for words the God first speaks and says "Hello my son, what has brought you here?" I respond hastily, "I cannot remember, but I must be dead to have traveled this far into the afterlife." I am so curious and cannot hold back my first question, "Are you really God and is this truly Heaven?"

He does not respond to this question of mine but responds saying "My dear son, it is not your time just yet. Be happy you have seen what you have, for no one else has before their time." I can never look directly at God, for there is another great beam of light at least ten times more intense than the person I have followed here. It is as if God was everything all at once, my mind still cannot comprehend it all. My words have to settle as a valid description. God was a entity I could feel; his presence was warming all around and brought sudden peace and comfort over me. I felt as if I was one with my mind, body, and soul. God allowed me to sense these feelings.

After God's last sentence, my guide appeared once again and lead me back out towards the gate where I had come from. The being said one last thing to me before pushing me off the clouds to fall gently back into reality, "Your wait will all be worth it, cherish life on Earth while you can..."

Author's Note
After reading stories from Dante's Inferno (Limbo and Satan), I have been inspired to put my own twist on visualizing the afterlife. Instead of focusing on the "Inferno" or Hell, I wanted to envision my own adaptation of Heaven. After reading the vivid description of Satan, I thought about what God would look like if it were placed in Heaven rather than Hell.

Bibliography
This story was inspired by reading the two section of Dante's Inferno entitled, Canto 4: Limbo and Canto 34: Satan, both written by Tony Kline in 2002.

Reading Diary Week 13 Continued: Dante's Inferno

About to meet Satan himself, I can only image how terrifying this would be...this quote really grabbed me and I loved the style from a diary perspective: 

"Reader, do not ask how chilled and hoarse I became then, since I do not write it, since all words would fail to tell it. I did not die, yet I was not alive. Think yourself now, if you have any grain of imagination, what I became, deprived of either state."

Satan had three heads, a fiery red one, and two others above each shoulder. The right hand one was whitish yellow and the left hand one was black. He had two wings that were the texture of a bat's and chewed on sinners of torture. The three men being chewed in the three different mouths of Satan were Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Once they left hell by climbing along Satan's body, it was Easter Sunday when they emerged. 

Satan's Three Heads, Source

These were the recorded thoughts after reading the story entitled Canto 34: Satan, written by Tony Kline in 2002.

Reading Diary Week 13: Datnte's Inferno

The limbo part of Dante's Inferno. I really loved how descriptive this book is and how my imagination starts running wild as I read about this particular part of the afterlife. Here in limbo, there was no sound, but only the sighing from the sorrow of the crowds of children, women, and men. These people who are stuck in limbo have not been baptized and therefore did not worship God correctly; that is why they are all here. All these people in sorrow are stuck in a deep dark abyss. This idea of "limbo" really grabs my attention; maybe I will do something with this story in my storytelling post this week.

Doorway to Limbo, Source

These were the collected thoughts after reading the story entitled Canto 4: Limbo, written by Tony Kline in 2002.