1.
After God put the whole world on lockdown for a couple years, I accidentally fell backward into the Heaven Room, an interactive gospel exhibit. Although it was closed, my doppelgänger found her way inside thanks to her well-schooled appearance, a petite, innocuous barista with side bangs who mixed pearls at the boba shop or made handmade lotion bars and goat’s milk soap. My little doppelgänger wandered through a maze of black-box style displays and took a left—or a right—into the Heaven Room. It lit up with floor-to-ceiling lights and played a recording of the hallelujah chorus through its invisible, bass-amplifying speakers.
So, my alter ego fell in slow motion. Nay, I almost belly-flopped on the mirrored floor of the Heaven Room. I was so mortified that I fired my doppelgänger on the spot. If it hadn’t been for the angels, I would’ve slammed into the wall-to-wall cloud mural—if it hadn’t been for the angelic choir holding up my shoulders in vertical space like a plexiglass window. I stood listening to the hallelujah chorus washing over my soul, a shimmering wave of chiffon like the chapel-length train of a wedding dress. When the chorus finished, I breathed deeply. I looked up, and the Holy Spirit appeared in the haloed, crystalline air like a handsome, unrequited beau waiting patiently atop a staircase, gazing at me as if to say, I’ve been here all this time, my love, but where were you? How shall I woo you?
Sweet Jesus, I’m sorry—
I was too sad in the pandemic
to pay attention to what
you were whispering.
To. Slow. Down.
Breathe. Breathe.
2.
Once upon a time, my days as a barista at the boba shop were harrowing. I wanted to quit and pour soy wax candles to sell at the farmer’s market instead. I wanted to mix lychee fragrances for face lotion and make raw butter out of shea seeds. At the boba shop with its myriad concoctions, I could not tell the difference between tapioca pearls, black grass jelly, or aloe—I confused rose milk with matcha tea; condensed milk with the notorious cheese foam. To manage stress, I bought a bread pillow shaped like a baguette and about the size of an otter so I could hug it after work, especially when I had migraines. After I ordered it factory direct, I couldn’t wait for the bread pillow to arrive. I checked for notifications compulsively. The advertisement promised a plush, inflatable pillow that would look ragged at first, then self-inflate over a day after removal from its vacuum-sealed package.
When it arrived in a cardboard box, smack-flat as a pancake, I experienced a pang of doubt—what if it turned out to be a disappointment, after all? On the floor, I tore apart the cellophane, where the bread pillow lay dull as a bedroom slipper. Sadly, I dropped it in a corner of my bedroom next to my overnight suitcase, hoping for a miracle. Would this inflatable bread loaf take a few months to come to life? The next morning, to my delight, the bread pillow had puffed up to the size of a lumbar cushion. I embraced it joyfully and lifted it above my head, my praise offering to God, grateful for this divine provision, my daily bread. Yet even this beloved pillow was inadequate to save me.
3.
The advisory board of the museum spends a lot of time debating the merits of the Heaven Room. How many visitors a year does the Heaven Room draw, the board members murmur, as if the Heaven Room were a tourist attraction or a carnival ride. Do angels draw their flaming swords overhead, warring against the principalities? How many schoolchildren’s field trips on a monthly basis, how many scholars of eschatology, how many demographers and ethnographers, how many retirees from the assisted living homes, and how about our local and faraway churches?
The data cloud informs us that the Heaven Room hosts a hundred or so visitors twice a year, especially in the month of May and during the month of November. The data cloud shows thousands of visitors annually. Whatever the data indicate, whether hundreds or thousands, is not mutually exclusive—if there are thousands of visitors, the Heaven Room could very well have a hundred visitors a couple times a year. Finally, despite all the cost-benefit analysis, the Heaven Room remains free of charge. We simply cannot charge people for access to the Heaven Room. To enter, all you do is knock on the door and ask.
4.
One day in the future, when the world opens again after the quarantine, pilgrims fly all over the world to the Heaven Room. We have faith that God is omnipresent in the Heaven Room, and operates with atoning and prevenient grace despite us. The Heaven Room is a lovely, blue corner of the universe at the end of a labyrinth of glory; verily, a cloister of velvet exhibits adorned by radios and gospel tracts pointing the way to salvation; and the sighs of people on their way to time without end. Worldwide guests recall the day when their parents or grandparents brought them, hand in hand, to the Heaven Room.
The Heaven Room does not merely exist in a parallel universe of the metaphysical imagination. It also exists in a museum tucked in a maze of black boxes in a mansion masquerading as yet another museum. It’s a museum within a museum. It is not the voice of God who echoes in this room, but rather, the generational storytelling that remains sacred. The Heaven Room and its cloud murals and mirrors are artifacts of a bygone era, yet it is a partial history of eternity.
A portal, an infinitude of hallelujahs—
I was today years old, so to speak,
half a century in age, when I fell
backward into the Heaven Room.
And I was never again the same.
*
