alive the lamb
and so too us
and that is what we know
beyond the wake
as sea and space
is clear to those who go
but we, the dead
can’t breach the gap
and comprehend His peace
we walk in faith
imagine light
what paradise might be
the scholar’s mind
and artist’s brush
conceive of ever days
of colors new
and age no more
and none the needless pain
but all the kingdoms
we design
are feeble in the dawn
of what is true
the love and view
when last the gap is gone

This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” -Ephesians 5:14

Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming. -CS Lewis (Collected Letters, to Mary Willis Shelburne, 28 June. 1963)

and since heaven is an irresistible and wondrous imagining, here’s a bit further:

Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know. -John 14:2-4 (NKJ)

But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it–made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand. -CS Lewis (The Problem of Pain, chapter 10)

and since we were given story to speak to our souls:

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are–as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands–dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. -CS Lewis (The Last Battle, chapter 16, last paragraphs)

and since, after all, earth is a pretty great place to wait:

.
images: Mahler VIII by Paula Arciniega; home video from Florida family vacation