Heaven's Bouncer

 Photo by Erik Shin 

 The germ of inspiration for this story came from the song Viva La Vida by Cold Play. There is a line that says :
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name

At that point my mind began to wander and wonder what happened to all the souls that passed on before St. Peter came along, did St. Peter even want the job, and what was it like to have that awesome responsibility of being the keeper of the keys of heaven.

 

Heaven's Bouncer

You know, I never wanted to be a saint. In fact you ask most of the others that have become saints and they will tell you it's no picnic. Not only am I the patron saint of bakers, bridge builders, butchers, fishermen, harvesters and masons, I also have the dubious honor of "keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven". This latter distinction is the one that I will try to describe. There are really no words that can adequately convey all of the nuances of the next world, nor are there any corollaries that I can use to describe some of the situations, but I will try to use this wonderfully rich English language to its utmost.

 Imagine a plain that stretches out in all directions as far as the eye can see, a vast sea of nothingness. In the midst of the great expanse of nothing is a small group of souls, no more than a few million. They are all congregated around what for all intents and purposes is a huge set of gates. They were affixed to two rough-cut stone columns whose girth was massive. It would have taken five full-grown men reaching around one of them and then I am not sure if their fingers would have touched. The gates themselves were at least twenty feet high and half as wide each. They were made of mostly wrought iron with strings of pearls interwoven through the bars. The funniest part about the whole thing was the arch that topped the two columns. Bridging the tops of the columns was a rough-hewn arch whose face was perfectly smooth and polished, engraved in the arch was a single word, HEAVEN. That would crack me up every time I looked at it, it never got old.

 The other thing I never understood was how it worked. Let me explain, the gate was not some kind of magical portal that once you stepped through you vanished and reappeared in heaven. On the contrary, other than its size and me having the only key to that gigantic lock, (I always left it unlocked for fear of loosing the key), you can walk through it and end up exactly where you would if you had walked around it. It is more of a meta-physical gate than a physical gate, more of a rite of passage. I would have done away with it a long time ago, but the powers that be seem to think it still serves a purpose. Who am I to second-guess the Almighty!

 Before I came along it was absolute chaos outside of the gates of heaven. There were souls out there that had been milling about since the beginning of time. They had no purpose. Many who could not cope with the fact that they were dead, continued to show up at their old haunts. In fact there were quite a few that I never convinced that they were dead, most of the ghost sightings are because of this.

As with any mob, over time, there begins a stratification of classes. This group of souls was no different. Some were a nasty bit of work from the word go, and tended to bully the others. There were the righteous souls who didn't take any crap from the bullies. There were the innocents, mostly souls of children and babies, and a few adult souls that were wholly detached from the world and all of its trappings. I am not sure why they never wandered off; it was as though there was some magnetic quality that seemed to keep them all close to the gates of heaven.

 You can well imagine the mess I walked into, or maybe you can't. There were millions of souls, stretched out as far as the eye could see. There was me at the gate, the book of souls under my arm, the key to the gate in my hand. I must have been out of my mind to have accepted this position, then again I don't think it was an offer I could have refused. As I approached the gate with the key, the mob, because that was all they were to me, began to surge forward like they would rush the gate. Not knowing what to do, I held the book aloft and said in my most authoritarian voice, "No one passes through the gate unless his name is written in the book." This made them cower back in submission and I proceeded to unlock the gates. As they swung open everything seemed to be brighter and in sharper contrast. I looked for a place to lay the book down, but there was nothing. I said under my breath, "You would think there would be at least a table and chair here." No sooner than I had murmured those words I turned around to face the crowd and whacked my shin on an oak table leg, then very nearly tripped over the chair. Looking around in no particular direction I said, "Very funny!"

 I looked much as I had in life, a nose a bit too big for my face, a ruddy complexion and shoulder length gray hair. I should have looked nothing like this, being a spiritual being, but there were expectations to be met. It was sort of like when souls encountered Jesus for the first time. If they had been raise in a Caucasian church He appeared like all of the pictures they had ever seen, although he looked nothing like that in life. If fact the Sabbath which was supposed to be a day of rest and coming together to worship for the most part had become a day of moving apart. How can you get unity when you can’t even get people to agree on where to meet and how to act after you get there? But once again; I digress.

I placed the book on the well worn oak table, with all of its burn marks and utensil scars. The book was about the size of a current day newspaper but about four inches thick, I could have sworn that it was only about three inches thick when I had arrived. I began at page one and started calling out names. My theory was that one by one the souls would come forward and pass through the gates. The very first one, he had been here the longest, didn't want to go. He said he had made some new friends and wanted to stay with them until their names were called. As I had no rule book for any of this, I made the first of many executive decisions. I said, "I only said you cannot pass through the gate unless you name is in the book. Since your name is in the book you may pass through, if you want to wait and go with your friends I can see no harm in that." So the very first candidate to pass through the pearly gates refused, temporarily.

 As there is no time or space in this place, as human beings understand it, it is hard to explain some things properly. Let me just say that this calling out the names and letting people pass through the gate went on for what seemed a very long time but in reality passed by in the twinkling of an eye. It was about this time that Jesus stopped by to see how things were going. I showed him the book that had not diminished in size, but I think it had gained an inch or two. I told him how I would call the names and let them pass through the gate. He told me that his Father had sent him to talk to me because things didn't seem to be moving at quite the pace He had anticipated. I immediately got on the defensive telling Him I was doing the best I could and that I had no guidelines to work from. He said he knew and understood it was difficult, but he could help.

 He opened the book and pointed at one of the names on the page, it seemed to glow faintly while all the others just seemed flat. He said, "You see that name, it's a special case and requires special attention." I am thinking, great this will really speed things up if I have to dole out this special attention too as well as herd these souls through the gate, but I held my tongue. He continued, "All of the rest can go through en-mass, you just have to say the word and it will be so.”

" Let me get this straight I just have to deal with the special cases and the rest just pass right through without me calling their names?”

 “That's how it is, if you say the word.”

 I stood up and said, “All of the souls whose name are in the book that do not require special attention may pass unhindered through the gate from this day forward. Immediately the crowd thinned and the book shrunk down to about a half an inch. Jesus nodded His approval, and then he said " Nearly seven hundred years have passed on the earth since I left and a new prophet has come, to continue mans spiritual education, His name is Muhammad and his religion is Islam. His followers have protected the Christians and the Jews and recognize Me as Jesus the Christ. These souls are to be allowed to pass, although you may find some of them show up as special cases.

I looked down at the shrunken book and began to ask how do I deal with the special cases, but when I looked up Jesus was gone.

 It seemed my job had just become much easier and much harder at the same time.

 The stories of all the special cases would fill many volumes and would be too time consuming to tell now, so we will leave them for another time.