The Disappearance of Familiarity: Thoughts on Disneyland and Heaven

Journaling has been a vital part of my life now for a bit more than 17 years.  That is nearing half my life.  And by vital, I mean like breathing or sleeping or eating Cheetos.  That sounds extreme, I know.  But day-in-day-out I experience new things, hear new things, read new things; even dream new things.  These new things bounce around my mind like lottery balls, jostling each other, jockeying for position; numbers blurred by the flurry of activity.  If I go too long without journaling, all the new things back up and my mind begins to feel claustrophobic; too many balls bouncing around in the drum.  In fact, I have a crippling fear of my mind getting so full that I actually lose ideas, which is a bit arrogant because it assumes my ideas are profound enough to mean something to begin with.  At any rate, journaling has become the necessary escape route for those new things; the process, if you will, of pushing the button that apparently sucks the little numbered lottery ball up through the long narrow vacuum tube, spins it around and presents it as something readable and understandable.  And like the lottery, sometimes the audience is pleased by the result; ecstatic even, and sometimes the audience is disappointed or angered.  Of course, with journaling, my audience is me.  But my desire is to change that.  No one else reads my journal.  But anyone can read my blog.    

Now, I don’t know if I’m different.  I don’t think I am.  But sometimes some pretty thoughtful ideas fall out of my head onto the pages of my journal; or, keeping with the above metaphor, they get sucked up the tube and appear on the page much to the pleasure of the audience…me.  And I hope to use this space to share some of them. 

Heaven is one such thoughtful idea that fell out recently.  Not the concept of a heaven by any means.  That idea preceded me by an eternity.  Rather, a particular way of thinking about heaven; one of the many mysterious concepts of religion.

My kids (presently ages 3, 5, & 7) had never been to Disneyland before last September.  They had a sense that it was there…somewhere.  They had watched a few Disney animated movies.  They had seen several of the Disney characters.  But they had never actually been to Disneyland.  Never-the-less, for months leading up to us going as a family their enthusiasm mounted with exponential magnitude.  Often they would burst out in pops of jubilance:  “We’re going to Disneyland!” one would exclaim.  “Yeah, and we’re going to see Cinderella!” another would add.  And the third would chime in, “…And Goofy!”  Or Minnie or Belle or Woody or whatever other character may have been the star of the last DVD they had watched.  They talked about characters they’d never seen like Peter Pan and Dumbo with a joy that was electrifying and contagious.  They talked about rides they’d never ridden like Splash Mountain and Autopia and the submarines like they were “old hands” at ‘em.  I can’t tell you what a blessing it was to watch. 

Of course, for all the enthusiastic ebbs, there were times of flow.  The ecstatic delight that waxed long and strong after watching Toy Story or Beauty and the Beast, waned short and thin with the varying uncertainties; mainly the “getting there” part, the airplane ride, which none of them had ever done either.  As departure neared, the excitement of Disneyland had entered a full on battle with the uncertainty of flying. 

Then we went…and they could never have imagined.  From airplane take-off to the hotel to the theme parks to the flight back home, all the familiarity they had armed themselves with paled amidst the actual experience of the epic and insuperable event that it was.  Like heaven maybe.  None of us have been there.  We have read about it.  We know who is there and we think we have a general sense of what goes on there.  We are familiar with heaven; streets paved with gold, a room prepare just for me, a reunion with all my family and friends that have gone before…not to mention my dead pets. 

Often, when we talk about heaven, we express a level of enthusiasm only slightly greater than that of going golfing on a world class course or taking a cruise ship to Fiji or getting free tickets to the Super Bowl.  As well, that enthusiasm or joy we often express about heaven ebbs and flows depending on earthly circumstances and situations; depending on uncertainties.  At times, we want to go now because “it has got to better than this.”  At other times, “How could heaven be any better than this?” 

Well, I’ll admit, Disneyland is no heaven…I don’t think.  Not even sure if is the happiest place on earth.  Yet, because of the dynamic effectiveness of marketing, we know enough about Disneyland that when we are preparing to go for the first time there is a measure of familiarity that generates a greater and greater degree of joy, which in-turn presses us toward the actual experience.  And then, upon arrival, all the familiarity vanishes amidst the grand overwhelm of actually experiencing it; all that we thought we knew so well about it disappears with the arrival of the sensory fullness and actual expression.  And I guess I wonder, at the end of it all, if that will be the same effect when we get to Heaven?