"Anyway, this is due to how God set up the cosmos. Don't bother asking me because I don't understand it all, but you have to believe me when I say it was the only way the cosmos could work the way he wanted. I say 'he'. It works, but it's not really correct. 'It' makes him sound like a thing...an lesser animal or whatever. And that would certainly be the wrong direction to point you. God may as well be a 'him'. A father who art in heaven?
"Well, so, you reap what you sew..." at this his expression turned weary. "You do in a very literal sense. You create the misery you will experience in the afterlife. And, I suppose, the joy. But life separates us from these things. We see lots of cause but no effect, I guess. But they are waiting for us, in the afterlife. But you can't simply experience them. They...manifest. Demons, cherubs, serifs, gargoyles...millions of different forms. Billions. Unlimited amounts. I think we all refer to them as demons and cherubs. When we refer to anything."
He had been staring at empty space, but now his eyes met mine. He still had that look only my dad can manage. The one that could either mean a hug or a slug. But his eyes told me the truth. They were tired. Hopeless. Regretful to a degree that actually made me physucally uncomfortable. "You have no idea, Clem. None at all. It's not like anything you could experience in life. Damnation. Living with...feeding your demons. Forever. The cherubs can't abide them. Joy is, in a way, more delicate than misery. They flee the awfulness of the demons. But you see them, and tyhat makes it even worse. They are so...magnificent. Light, beuaty, cheer...good. Everything the demons are not."
I managed to sink so far into the couch that the wooden frame was pressing against my bum, cutting off the blood to my lower legs. The voice of my dead father was almost a whisper. His eyes were telling me stories his mouth never could, though. Horror. Black horror. Black dispair.
"Each damned soul is...used...by it's demons. They feed themselves on your negative feelings. And on other people's negative feelings that come to you. That's the worst part. People think about you, remember you, and those feelings reach you, manifest and find you. Swarm. Feed the demons, create more demons, new ones. That's how it works. You feed them, life feeds them, they grow, change, multiply. Shift. Find new ways to rend and devour and injest. ALways something new, always something...
"There are other damned souls. They - we - ebb and flow through the afterlife, in our damned void, in hell. There is not much discussion, obviously. But there is some. But no comfort. And no one suffers the way you do. And you like no one else. A human mind can't really comprehend all the forms evil can take."
At this he shook his head as though trying to avoid sinking into a trance. "We know heaven, too. We sense it, all the time. And that is the final torment. Heaven. Always beyond us. Always beyond our realization. The cherubs dissipate before they reach it. Without our souls to feed them they cease to be. They gather close to heaven, and we feel them disinigrate. Waste. Any joy that might be yours, just gone. If I could weep I would. But that would be relief, and thedemons are not big on relief."
The dead levity of his last sentence brought me out of my immobility. "Dad.... I mean... why are you here? What is all this? I mean, I am convinced, OK? I accept Jesus and God and all of it. But why do you get to be here...to show me?"
"This is what I gather. It's not like any angels or hevenly spirits can communicate with the damned. This is from mediaries that can tolerate hell, and they are...difficult to get your head around. Anyway, what I think happened is...you cheated God's plan. God....you read Asimov's Foundation? Well, Seldon right? He could predict human behavior based on mathematical principals or something. Could predect the future, but only as it related to large groups. Nations and stuff.
"God is like Seldon to the googlplexeth power. He reads....the peices of reality that make up the peices of reality humans understand. The bit's a reality that compose the "strings", the vibrations. He knows whether Schrodinger's cat is alive or dead, I guess is what I am saying. But there are elements of reality so minute even God can't factor them. They are beyond even God. They are what he is...he is that stuff. And he can't understand that stuff. Agh, I sound like an idiot. I just don't really understand it myself.
"Anyway, he creates. The stuff that is him creates. And he comprehends, as the stuff. And he controls and predicts, as does the stuff. But not perfectly! For a human it would be so close to perfection you couldn't tel the difference. It takes...not just time, but space time, and not just one, but an unknown amount, to see the imperfections that God can't discern. But it exists. The Almighty Uncertainty Principal.
"God's 'nature' is that he creates. To not do so is like a square circle. It's nonsense. God reates. And God exists. There was no before and will be no after God because nonexistence is simply not logically possible for God. I know this is mumbo jumbo, but once you exist in spirit it makes sense. God creates. He has created and will create and is creating every nano second and in between. The stuff that he is forms and reforms and takes onmeaning...and he controls and manipulates and...and I guess he desired sense. Desired something of himself that was beside himself. Another God, or many. But not lesser. And so began the cosmos, the spacetimes we would recognise. We could inhabit.
I might be giving too much away in this monologue. In fact I know I am. Ack. I am fleshing it out even as I write it. This can make you nuts.
Love them, keep'm coming.
