by Pierrette Komarek

Created on: December 18, 2008   Last Updated: December 20, 2008

No one will really know the answer to this rather interresting question, for the simple fact that no one has come back from "heaven" to tell us otherwise!

But I will go along instead with the very wise and sage Frenchman named VOLTAIRE. voted the man of the eighteen Century who wrote "Le Paradis est la' ou je suis"(Paradise is wherever I am! ) This so impressed one of my daughter, that she had it inscribed above the entrance of her home. For one thing is certain, not everyone of us may make it one day to Paradise, but we CAN live our lives in such a way as to make it joyous and happy right here on earth.

Voltaire was a very smart man, as well as a compassionate one. During a famine in his hometown of Ferney, (later renamed Ferney-Voltaire in his honor) he helped feed the poor people there. He also went so far as to kidnap a Watchmaker from nearby Geneva Switz, so that he would show the Villagers how to build watches and thus bring prosperity to them. It was from him that we get the quote "I may not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"... when he defended a man in Toulouse France, who was later sadly hanged for sedition.

He also had a wicked sense of humour, when after fleeing the wrath of the Royals in Paris, and thus saving himself from spending some times in the Bastille for "Lese majesty,"... He lived in England for a while; it was after this sejourn that he wrote: "The English have only 3 sauces but 40 religions.!" Having eaten in England I'll have to say that Voltaire had a point.

He was very much hated by the priest of the next door village of Moens... for Voltaire constantly refered to the hypocrisy of the Chuch, and especially of his neighbor cure'..they even went to court over it. But Voltaire did believe in God, and no further proof of this can be found, that as you enter his Chateaux next to Geneva, to the left of the entrance there is a small Chapel, that is simply dedicated "TO GOD."

For finally in the end, Voltaire was right, it is given to all of us to make a hell or Paradise out of our lives. We all have known rich people who could only find solace in drugs or material things and still were unhappy, the TV is full of it every day... while no one sadly report the millions of satisfied folks who go about their lives, even in modest conditions, finding joy in doing for others, or what the Jews refer to as doing a "mitzva" (a meritorious act that expresses God's will) This is indeed given to all of us to do-whatever our given religions, and was best expressed by Jesus when he said "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

So I guess in the end, Voltaire must have believed in Paradise, as he wisely prepared himself while on earth to enter it...We should all be so wise!

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