HEAVEN

Lots of new-talk about Heaven has been inspired by a bestseller "Is Heaven for Real," by Pastor Todd Burpo, and just recently Time magazine grabbed on this topic.

Burpo, pastor of a church in Nebraska, a down-to-earth, do-everything man, wrote about son Colton, who almost died at age four, during emergency surgery, and told his daddy afterward, that he went o heaven.

What does one think, nowadays, about Heaven? Are your visions of heaven created by parents, grandparents, the church, bible stories, loving teachers or what?

What do you picture?

Maybe someone told you that death is "a long, long sleep." (Someone sang me a beautiful song that said that.) Or were you told that after you die you will reunite with beloved dead relatives? Perhaps you need a HEAVEN to inspire you to do good deeds, and thoughts of burning in HELL stop you, prevent you from doing ugly, selfish, unlawful things.

These are just my thoughts circling around, me wondering and wandering.

There are so many things to fear .-- fires, poisons, weather disasters, bombs, guns, nutty people, disease, corrupt officials, food and water shortages, and ... golly, there are so many things to put on my list.

When we're little, very, very young, we learn about death when we see a flower die, or find a dead bird on the ground. We learn ways not to think about death or talk about it or fear it. And that makes us fear it more. And fear, I think, is like a black blotch of ink spreading on a blotter.

I wrote a blog two years ago, about the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped for 70 days in a mine, and suddenly, almost miraculously, saved. I knew from my own personal experience, that the miners had a new perspective -- a power they didn't have before the mine collapsed. Aside from becoming celebrities, which is a life-changing experience, there's a change in your spirit when you almost die.

I don't mean a scare, "Oh my God, I could have crashed into that car." When you almost die, but don't die, there's a new awareness, a loud, strong sense that this is MY LIFE.

It happened to me.

Six months after I'd recovered from a major automobile accident, all of a sudden I was convulsed with intolerable pain, and landed in an operating room. During the surgery my heart failed. I watched the doctors, I saw them above me trying to revive me with electric paddles.

Did I see light at the end of a tunnel? No. I saw white light over my head. I heard someone say my heart had stopped beating for five-and-a-half minutes. A doctor said I might be bedridden, there might be serious brain damage.

The fact is, I am not brain damaged, paraplegic, or bedridden. While I was recovering, still unable to walk without crutches, I decided -- yes, decided -- that I was going to dance at Lincoln Center. It took a lot of doing, and hours and hours of rehabilitation exercises. It seemed like a fantasy, but it kept me going.

Yep, I did dance at Lincoln Center, two sold-out performances.

No, I don't think I'll go to Heaven or Hell when I die. The fact is, I feel I have been in heaven. And I am writing about heaven, because I am still in heaven -- yes -- it IS heaven -- that I can dream up something I want to do and -- YAY -- go for it!

(Video) IN LOVE WITH CYRANO

Em asks John Cullum to read aloud the speech she wrote for Cyrano, in her adaptation of the Rostand play. For Em, this speech represents what an artist stands for. The words are her own personal credo.

All the projects that John Cullum and Em created, mounted, and produced together are the high points in the time they've shared. Even now, looking back, or looking ahead to future undertakings, "CYRANO" is the number one favorite.

IS NATURE OVER?

I like Bryan Walsh. He's a reporter for Time. I've looked him up and seen a photo of him -- he looks as if he's in his forties, but I can't find any detailed background about him. I've read articles that he's written on a wide range of subjects -- weather, science, new inventions, computers, clothes, exercise, food. What he writes makes sense to me and often -- amazingly, quite often -- he educates me.

When I saw this bleak picture with the headline, "NATURE IS OVER," I winced. It seems to me Time, like Newsweek, like TV, headlines stuff to sell something -- an advertiser's product, the magazine, the TV station itself.

"Dammit, nature is NOT over," I was thinking, till I noticed the name below the headline -- the article was by Bryan Walsh.

Bang -- the first paragraph announced that a team of Russian scientists in Antarctica have just found Lake Vostok, a large sub-glacial lake -- water that's been sealed off, untouched by humans for 34 million years.

Not sure why that was hugely important, I read sort of absentmindedly and gathered a lot of anthropological terms, and lots of percentage numbers about "ecosystems" changing.

I heated up my coffee. Oh boy, the information that's been loaded into my brain about endangered things -- animals, birds, water, forests, melting icebergs, bad air, bad weather, new diseases -- it's almost overwhelming. This has been a year of negatives, unending polls/numbers/percentages -- I'm tired of thinking about where we are heading, politically and economically, thinking about the rebellions, the horrors -- all the bad stuff that's happening all over the world.

I sipped my coffee and I read on. What Bryan Walsh was reporting was loaded with words about the "Holocene age" that we've been in for the last 12,000 years. The word, derived from the Greek, means new and whole. Apparently now, right now, because there are now seven billion humans on earth and man is going to change to change the world in order to survive -- the geologists, and scientists have said that we entering the "Anthropocene age." ("Anthro" is man).

Walsh explained about these ages or epochs like a teacher, gathering and summarizing facts objectively. Not preaching or emphasizing what mankind has done by selfishly, harmfully ignoring environmental issues, he moved me into a new sense of reality.

He pointed out that nowadays we do many marvelous things to maintain and expand life. As an example of this, Walsh mentioned nuclear power that IS cleaner, better for the earth than the power we are currently using. I braced myself, expecting to hear again the doomful numbers, percentages, polls, summaries about what's happening in Japan. But Walsh, instead of reiterating all that, pointed out that the dangerous aspects of nuclear power can be conquered, even re-conceived.

Quoting a Nobel Prize winning environmentalist, he said, "'Our ability to comprehend the full extent of the human impact on earth puts us in a unique position as planetary gardeners, a responsibility we have no choice but to take on. We are as gods, and we have to get good at it.'"

I like that.

I like the thought that we are gardeners, that digging into and studying the 34-million-year-old Lake Vostok can help us figure out what's going to happen to the our planet in the next 10,000 to 20,000 years. It can help us figure out what we need to do as we keep growing.

For the first time, I find myself thinking that all the bad stuff that's happening here, happening all over the world -- those numbers/polls/ percentages/ surveys, may be moving us into a new reality.

Am I grabbing onto hope? If you dig into the word "anthropocene," you'll find, as I found, it is very current, new thought that many other people are digging into and finding hopeful,

Visit this link -- Welcome to the Anthropocene debate. Or click and read what Science Website says. about this; read what the NY Times said:

Or glance at this National Geographic video for a second. If you have time, watch the entire video, and-absorb the ideas for a while, and see where it takes you.

WHAT DO I CRAVE?

Browsing in one of my magazines, I saw a photo of a luxury car, expensive dress, fabulously chic shoes -- the real price -- next to it, an amazing bargain price for each item.

I speed-read ahead, and learned about gilt.com, a new Website. On gilt.com, you can buy all sorts of luxury items at super-low bargain prices.

Like groupon.com, apparently gilt.com is booming. Already big investors are investing in it. The article went on and on about its IPO, (initial public offering), that's going to get millions of people signing up and buying the luxuries they crave.

I put a check mark on the page and attached a paper clip thinking "Well, maybe I could do a blog about this."

Big money stuff, a hot new Website selling luxury items that people crave, doesn't excite me these days the way they used to.

With my husband, John Cullum, I've bought a very expensive luxury car, considered buying a mansion, and haute couture clothes were certainly something I craved.

Maybe because I belong to yesterday -- am part of the previous generation or the one before that -- nowadays I don't think about or crave luxury, beyond what we have in our home -- 5th floor, our attic style bedroom at the rear of our loft, where sounds from the other buildings can't be heard. Right now I crave the luxury of privacy, peace and quiet, where I can think my own thoughts, remember things we did, re-visit hopes, dreams, and fun adventures.

I don't want to think about now -- bad stuff, troubles, race prejudice -- Florida boy shot, horribly ugly attacks on our president, silly sad war against women, scary bad laws that restrict voters, and so many countries where masses of people are poor, homeless, brutalized, and war, war, war looming.

My only comfort is remembering -- yes, it's comforting -- what our country, sweet land of liberty has meant to me -- wow -- still means to me now, more than ever.