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As a young teen, I spent a summer babysitting my younger cousins at their home. A poster depicting Heaven hung on their bedroom wall. It showed a cartoon castle of gold, nestled in the clouds, open pearly gates, etc. It looked just as my aunt and various Sunday school teachers had said it did. Their faith told them so.

Despite these descriptions, however, I never truly believed in a physical Heaven. I couldn't have told you why I didn't believe. I just didn't. For many of my childhood years, I did, however, feel guilty about not believing in the physical golden Heaven, and not truly in the physical God-on-a-throne either. I felt guilty for my lack of faith, but I still couldn't believe. That would have been lying.

Nowadays, and for many years since my teens, I no longer feel guilty for not sharing the faith of those who believe in a physical Heaven. My conception of religion has dissolved into a vague sense of spirituality that I would call open-to-wonder. I don't feel the need to commit to any particular belief other than an inner sense of rightness.

I believe that many religions share core values because we all have an inner sense of rightness. I don't believe that the details matter much. I don't believe that we must all believe the same thing.

I don't believe that Heaven is a real physical place, but I am open to the possibility of Heaven as a state of being-perhaps a plane of existence, as in "the other side of the veil." I would call the veil ignorance or confusion, or perhaps just an imaginary separation between physical and non-physical experience.

I don't require an afterlife to give my present experience meaning, because I truly feel grateful for what I experience now. I do sense an afterlife, or perhaps I have a very vivid imagination. Some things, such as the existence of an afterlife, of deceased ancestors, spirit guides, etc., feel right. Some things, such as a golden Heaven and a punishing God, just don't feel right.

As an older teen, a man on the street handed me a flier with a cartoon picture of a blonde God disembarking from a golden spaceship to collect the earth's children and jet them up to Heaven. That description didn't feel right to me, either.

One of my cousins grew into a Christian missionary. I don't know if he still imagines Heaven as a golden city graced by the presence of God on a throne. For me, Heaven is love and beauty and everything that feels right and good. That's my reality, at least for now.

Learn more about this author, Sara Mcgrath.
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