Short Stories

PLEASING TO THE SPIRIT

by Thomas Kirkpatrick
05/02/18
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Spent some time entertaining my Mother this week.  She's just a big kid with a lot of years.  Always has been the adventurous one.  Now at 84, she has laid back some and just travels around bumming off what she calls her dwindling friends.  She flew down from Atlanta this week to tour around Florida with me as her driver.  We've had a good time but it has been difficult squeezing in these jaunts and maintaining my work presence also.  This week I took her from Tampa to Naples about a hundred and fifty-mile drive one way.  My old '55 Dodge doesn't have a fancy tape player and the Air conditioner doesn't work either.  So she put on her strongest hair net and we rolled down the windows and let the old AM radio play real loud.  What a sight we must have been.  What a sight we two old farts must have been to the normal folks on the road.  Her hairnet slapping the air rushing by and my sideburns getting tangled beneath my nose as the sounds of the big band era escaped into the insanity of Florida traffic.

 Along the way, Fort Myers I think, we stopped to place our hairs back in order, peel our clothes away from our backs and water the Dodge.  We also decided to eat a little breakfast at Denny's which she does call Lenney's.  Funny how a stupid commercial can stick in your mind to the point of calling something by a different name.  It has been a while since I've eaten out in a restaurant and when requesting the smoking area found ourselves on a long journey to the very back room.  Besides it being a long walk for Mother I felt as if we had been exiled for behavior unbefitting for civilization.  None the less once I commit I seldom retreat even if I realize it was a bad idea.  It's that old foolish pride thing.  Part of that male macho thing.  I'd rather rip the hair off my chest than admit an error in thinking, which is if I had any to spare.  As we sat there waiting for the waitress to venture from parts unknown and obviously parts far from where we were, we had to amuse ourselves.  They didn't give us the menu that you can draw on with the crayon.  I would have thought one of us could have scored one.  Either Mom living in her second childhood or I not quite escaped from mine.  But now they left us there to sit and stare at the neat designs on the table.  Which went away after the waitress did a show and wiped the table clean.

 When one is pressured to make conversation but has nothing to say one can find them self-saying the craziest things.  My Mother being a Nintendo freak and spending a lot of her time playing games I thought this would be a good light subject without much controversy.  My Mother being a lot like her Mother is always ready for a good verbal argument.  I don't mean an altercation but just a good debate.  My Grandmother would start something just for the fun of it.  It's not that I don't like a good debate it's just I don't like losing.  I can't think fast enough to keep up with her so I generally try to keep conversation lite and humorous.  So I fired what I thought would just be an amusing comment.  I asked Mom if she thought they had Bubble Babble in Heaven, this being her favorite game.

 Now I guess Mom wasn't in the mood for a lite conversation about Heaven.  Other than she can't wait to get there, and she'd go right now if she didn't have to die first, every time she thinks about Heaven it causes her to worry about Dad.  Do you think Dad will still love me when I get to Heaven?  I've heard the question a million times.  Well you know he will mom, I always reply knowing the next statement all too well.  But you know some people get married more than once and what do they do when they get to Heaven.  Who do they love then?  The First partner or the second?

 I've got an opinion about Heaven, well we all do.  I have to be careful when I discuss such things with my Mother.  She's been a Sunday school teacher and Preachers wife all her life.  Now she works with Missions when she is at home in Perry Ga.  Back in her younger days when she was only seventy she was in Northern Ireland doing evangelistic work there.  Before that in Ecuador.  So I have to be careful when I express my views with her.  I never know with Mom.  She will disagree just to see if I mean what I say.  And she always disagrees.  But I think when you think of heaven one must remember it is not to be seen in the same terms we are used to seeing things.

 Most of our life, if not all of it, we are busy in the pursuit of happiness.  But what is that?  I mean happiness.  It is different things to different people.  But most of the pleasing things we find along the way are pleasing to the physical aspects of our lives.  When we think about Heaven and what is pleasing there to us we must remember that nothing here will be there.  At first, that sounds bad.  There are a lot of things here I don't want to leave behind.  But when I think about it those things would not be pleasing there.  We should not vision Heaven in a physical sense.  We are not going to need to please the five senses in Heaven because we are not going to be burdened with them.  Picture yourself in a spiritual body.  How much more could you do if you didn't have to drag a physical body around?  If I want to go over there I have to take my body with me.  But if I didn't have a Physical body then I'd say go there and instantly I'd be there.  What restriction would I have?  No body to drag, air to fight, what is time and distance in eternity.  How could either be measured?  To see something is to be there, to want something is to have it.  So in Heaven, there is no physical and no physical law, we are free from that.

 In Heaven, there is no hate.  No jealousy.  How could you love one and not the other?  In a world where there is no evil what is there to hate.  In a world where love is all then there is no measure.  We shall love all equally with all.  And what shall we do?  I have often wondered that.  What shall I do in Heaven to pass the time?  Whoops!  There is no time, forgot about that, sorry.  Here on earth, I spend my time searching out what is pleasing to me.  To my five senses.  I sleep, eat, play, watch things attractive to my eye, hear things attractive to my ear, read things which provoke thought, get together with people that I love, explore for people that I'd like to love.  But these are things I do here to please me.  What will please me in Heaven?  I will have but one being there and that is what I will have to please.  So what is pleasing to the Spirit?  LOVE.

 So we concluded after our noontime breakfast that Dad will still love Mom with his all.  Just the same as he, her, you and I will.  Yes, we will all love everyone with our all because that is what is pleasing to the Spirit.

Thomas N Kirkpatrick

July 28, 2014