Yesterday,we saw the play titled The Seafarer in New York. I knew nothing about its themes or structure, except that it had received great reviews. I was surprised to discover that the play was about God and the devil and death and sin and forgiveness.
On Christmas eve, the devil shows up for a game of poker with 4 harddrinking Irishmen, whose lives flow with pain and turmoil and some glimmers of hope and love. The setting is a poor community on the coast, north of Dublin. A painting of the Virgin looks down on the conversation. The dialogue is quick and clever and ladened with profanity. In the end, in the context of a lot of remembered misery, hope is miraculously clawed out of life.
The Devil has come in the guise of a well dressed gentleman to play a game of cards for the soul of Sharkey. In explaining his presence, the devil proclaims the gospel of the Incarnation, while voicing his scorn of God, for loving human beings and not him, the Devil. In a searing monologue the devil describes hell. The images of hell would strike terror into our souls, if we really believed that we were confined to that kind of reality for eternity. But we are watching this play in New York City in the 21st century. We don't really buy into that three story universe stuff with earthly life floating between heaven and hell? Do we?
Actually when the character embodyinhg the devil described hell, it sounded like how people sometimes experience themselves in this life, when they feel so deeply and desperately trapped in fear,isolation,and self loathing.
Certainly, the nature of our reality in the next life does perplex us. Paul Tillich years ago referred to this perplexity as the problem of finitude. We are finite. Our earthly life will end. Is there something more?
The Seafarer contrasted starkly wiht our usual imagery of life after death. At funerals and wakes, Christians of various strips will sometimes be heard to talk about the deceased person being in a better place now. Bereaved family members will comfort themselves with images of their loved one being in heaven. People are seen as living in pain free comfort.
A poet once wrote about eternity in terms of God's justice requiring htat he and all of us sit alone with our conscience, that he said would be judgement enough. somehow, in eternity, in the presence of God and those whose lives touched ours, we would wrestle with an enlivened conscience and its calls to remorse,repentance and restitution. This concept is closer to Dante's vision of purgatory--in the next reality we would progress through stages of remembering and re experiencing our life and being purged or cleansed or forgiven of that which is evil.
If we don't generally believe in hell, if some of the popular concept of heaven is just wishful thinking, then what truly is your or my image of our reality after we die?
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