Hamsters and Heaven

From Gold Teeth and Parking Spaces, a 2012 collection of my earlier blog posts

When I was training as a teacher, I was asked to teach an RE lesson on the Trinity. The usual class teacher stepped in helpfully beforehand to explain to me that the Trinity is like a cloverleaf. She said not to worry, it was a lovely lesson to teach and she could give me the notes and everything...

Fortunately she didn't sit in on my lesson.

I moved on swiftly with my class of 7 to 9 year olds to discuss the concept of a 'frame of reference' and how inadequate metaphors can be. I asked them to draw a hamster cage and add a speech bubble to suggest how a hamster might describe heaven.

They came up with good ideas:

"A hamster wheel that just keeps on turning and never stops,"

"an endless supply of delicious seed."

They got the fact that our metaphors are really limited.

By the end of the lesson, they agreed with me that whatever the Trinity was, a cloverleaf just wasn't going to cut it.

My theological expertise is little better than most hamsters I'm sure, but still I think the Trinity must be the epitome both of identity and of relationship.

Whatever else happens as we grow in God, I believe it must involve the complexities of our personal identity coming into harmony and integration with him.

In real terms I suppose that would mean the opposite of things like insecurity, restlessness, competition. With that in mind, the church as a community of harmonised and integrated individuals must be, at its very best, a beautiful thing.

I doubt a blueprint could exist to achieve this quality of being and communion.

I'm quite sure we can't contrive it, but I do feel confident that shades of it already exist in our lives, though perhaps fleetingly and at a relatively impoverished level.

Having experienced glimpses of the real thing makes me hungry for real relationship and community, and dissatisfied with any model of church that rests either on competition between individuals, or the eroding of individual worth.

I wrestle with disconnection.

I feel like I'm a piece from a different jigsaw puzzle, injuring other people or being injured by peculiarly shaped bits sticking out in the wrong places, feeling disappointed by gaps that need filling.

I've heard lots of people saying they feel the same, including people who I thought looked well connected. I often forget this and think it's just me struggling to connect.

My suspicion is that we all feel like it. But I'd like to think that, as living stones, we can hope for more.