Pizza for Haiti

I've been thinking about heaven and hell a lot lately. I am not going to get into much of it here, so you can relax right now. And even the last Pope admitted that heaven isn't a place you go when you die, rather it's a state you're in on Earth, in this life. Again, I'm not going to go there this evening. But it has had me thinking...

So here we are in Canada, enjoying all the kinds of things we enjoy. One might say we live in heaven here. Our ancestors would for sure think we live in some kind of heaven. (If I have to jiggle your imagination just think about computers and air travel, heated seats and hot showers and try describing them to your great-great-great grandparents. Seriously, give it a go, start talking.) The thing with heaven is that it co-exists with hell. (If you have trouble imagining hell, click on any link to Haiti at the moment.) The thing about heaven is that it has to hear about hell.

And when we are in heaven and we hear about hell, what are we going to do? Keep eating? Keep counting our money? Keep enjoying our heaven as though perhaps we've earned it? No. If you're like most people I know, you're going to be sitting a little less comfortably in your throne in the clouds and actually get off it and get your hands dirty.

Don't get me wrong, I notice the Haiti bandwagon thing happening. I live right beside the Shepherds of Good Hope and I know they're still hungry there, and even though there was a big earthquake someplace else making everybody else throw parties, they're still hungry here, (plus it's really freaking cold out tonight and people are going to freeze if they don't go inside). So having a disaster as big as a massive earthquake in Haiti happen shakes us, wakes us up. We get into action and raise money for Haiti, even if it's just for a couple of weeks. We have pizza parties in our homes and yoga classes in our studios and big concerts in our countries to raise awareness. And some of us will keep noticing that we live in heaven and hell is right there. For some of us, we live in heaven and hell at the same time. They co-exist. It's weird.

I happen to believe that for the most part, heaven and hell don't come as a matter of external circumstances, but are rather states inside of us. (We can all probably recall times when we had little but were happy and miserable while there was abundance.)

In any case, I ate some great pizza tonight and gave some more cash for the cause to help the people of Haiti. It's about time these people got some help and I think it's truly awful that it took such a massive catastrophe to get us to look their way and act like we care.