The Invention of Heaven

12/12/2020

The invention of heaven, I suppose was inevitable. Saint Peter playing the role of Anubis, where your heart and a feather were placed on scales, and if your heart were light (as a feather of course), you could step into the boat and be escorted across the river – there’s always a river or a gate and there is always a judgement. Ascend or be eaten? Ascend or be tortured? Who really wants eternal life anyway? Among the clouds or on Mount Olympus or hanging out on top of your very own pyramid – without life’s challenges and triumphs, admit it, you would get bored. The great philosophers of the East expect you to perform well while alive – to be kind, to be detached from material things, to be wise, to be respectful. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, all matter goes on – in one form or another. I prefer goddesses of destruction AND creation, like Kali and Pele (our Hawaiian Volcano Goddess). It’s all humans trying to find meaning in their lives. Reminds me of a Chinese saying I learned while living in Taiwan: Shr hou dwan ku – life is short and bitter. But I believe we were born to luxuriate, to celebrate to be grateful everyday for life’s beauty, sunsets, flowers, clouds, all here for us to enjoy and share. There are days when I cling to that.

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Author

Catherine G. Tripp writes for grownups. She writes for the curious, for those who appreciate wry humor, and seek to be enlightened on subjects they thought they knew well. When people hear or read her work, they are invited to walk in another’s shoes and having arrived at a greater understanding, they found the walk rewarding. The thematic core of her work is righteous indignation, to express historical wrongs in terms that make the characters and their practices banal in their everydayness, yet shocking in detail.

Her current project is three historical novels set in the 1850s, about three wise and powerful women’s lives. Hawaii’s beloved Emmalani born into royalty, China’s Dowager Empress plucked out of obscurity, and a determined abolitionist entrepreneur, these leaders lived lives of great adventure and endured unspeakable tragedy. When she writes about history -or memoir, she reminds us that we are all children of those who survived. Her recent writings and blog posts have been insightful, fast-paced, evocative essays about current events, and thought provoking memoirs about the tangled branches of her family tree.

Diatribes and Deathless Prose
@CGTrippWriter