You don’t go to heaven, and other dawnings

The arrival of 11/11/11 has stimulated lots of conversations about the Age of Aquarius. And no, it wasn’t because the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter had aligned with Mars. Those lyrics gave us a great song in the musical “Hair.” But astrology, the source of all this stuff, tells us that the moon is in the seventh house two hours of every day—and Jupiter aligns with Mars several times every year!

2011 Aquarius Clock

If there is such a thing as an Aquarian Age, I wondered, when does our universal clock transition it from dawning to the full blown thing? And what on Earth will it look and feel like?

If the song was wrong about the planets, it could be wrong about the “Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust, and no more falsehoods or derisions” part. I decided to check it out.

I was surprised to discover that some folks believe we’re fully into the Aquarian Age. In fact, they say it began centuries before the first flower child was born, all the way back as the 1780s. The marker: Demands for human rights began to escalate.

Needless to say, that’s in dispute. Those in another camp clock the arrival at November 11, 2011. And yet another group says hold our horses. The Age doesn’t appear until next year’s winter solstice: December 21, 2012.

OK, so it appears to be a guessing game, even among those who study astrology. Do they at least agree on the effect the Aquarian Age will have on the planet and its inhabitants? Negatory.

Most predict a period of awakening, a more enlightened and less superstitious period in human evolution that resembles the “Hair” lyricist’s description. But at least one prominent astrologer has a darker prediction. Robert Zoller sees the Aquarian world as one in which the “secretive power-hungry elites seek absolute power over others.” (Sound familiar?) Zoller’s other indicator: In the Aquarian Age, religion, which he called “the opiate of the masses,” will be viewed as offensive.

If Zoller is correct, the “Occupy” movement sweeping the planet may fulfill one of his criteria. Closer to home, I may have encountered the other. It was nothing short of offensive when a gentleman bearing a handful of little blue religious tracts interrupted my afternoon stroll on one of Chicago’s last 60-degree days.

He looked me dead in the eye, lowered his voice as if he was giving me an insider tip on a potent stock, and said, “Make sure a place is reserved for you in heaven.”

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

At what point in human evolution are we going to stop imagining heaven in outer space? For centuries, the blissful home of God and the angels was on the other side of the clouds. Commercial air travel busted that myth. Soon after that, space exploration forced heaven’s location farther into the distance. Today, instead of that sunny place we enjoy when flying above the fluffy clouds, heaven sits in the dark, in a void. How divine! Who wants to spend all eternity there?

On one hand, I totally understand why we cling to the idea that the God in the Bible now lives millions of light years away. He’s unpredictable: either loving and forgiving or violently angry, sadistically punitive. And He has been known to kill every living thing.

If God is a gigantic male being who lives beyond the farthest star in our galaxy, isn’t it more likely that our Golden Rule violations might go unnoticed? Secondly, if we believe that this gigantic male being has a history of boastfully committing genocide and harming his creation with plagues and wars, wouldn’t we want some distance—lots and lots of it?

Many of us even believe that God blames all of us for the sins of our prehistoric ancestors, and won’t forgive his sinful children without subjecting the only innocent one to an excruciatingly painful death by torture.

Yes, I truly understand why anyone who believes that God does such sadistic things would have to position him in outer space. I simply wish they’d do it in the privacy of their prayer closets and not on city streets.

Full moon-November 10, 2011

Full moon: November 10, 2011

While taking an early evening walk down Michigan Avenue a few nights ago, I spotted that bright 11/10/11 full moon hanging over the lake. Before I could grab my BlackBerry to capture it, I heard a familiar voice blaring from a nearby speaker.

“You can’t go to heaven unless you repent your sins! You must repent!”

Aaargh! This gravelly voice of doom has accosted downtown Chicago pedestrians for at least 40 years that I can remember. In all those years, I don’t recall ever seeing the al fresco preacher after sunset or anywhere but State Street. Perhaps he was disoriented by the Universal shift toward Aquarius and he landed on Michigan Avenue in the dark, waving his tattered Bible in one hand and a microphone in the other, warning liars, thieves, smokers, “homosec-shals” and everyone “living in sin” that God is not going to let them into heaven.

He echoes the belief of many who are heavily invested in this denigrating portrayal of a god who creates all of us but heinously allows only a few to return home. They believe God will cast the rest of us, billions upon billions, into a fiery pit. Never mind that dead bodies can’t feel fire (or cold), and never mind that only a sadist would subject his child to eternal torture. This is the god they love and worship, and I’m not going to argue with them.

As the sleeping prophet Edgar Cayce once said, “You grow to heaven. You don’t go to heaven.”

As for me and my house, we will serve a God of Love, an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God who lives in the hearts of all—a God that does nothing Love would not do, who holds a space in His heart for all His children, and harms no one for any reason.

Be it Aquarius or cheddar, I await the Age when “Peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.”

(Cue the 5th Dimension): “Let the sun shine! Let the sun shine in! The sun shine in.”