Removed from Heaven

According to Newell, there is a Jewish saying that in our mother’s womb we know God, but at birth we begin to forget. Then he tells the story of a little girl and her baby brother. When the baby boy was born, the girl kept asking if she could spend time alone with her newborn brother. The parents finally agreed, and intrigued by why she was making this request they listened at the door. The little girl said to her baby brother, “Tell me what God is like. I’m beginning to forget.”

The day after reading this, I was riding a CTA bus that was pretty well filled, studying my fellow passengers. I began to think of what Newell had written. I was watching a small child on his mother’s lap who was just staring at everything outside and inside the bus. The thought just came to me, “This “niño” is only about a year removed from heaven, a year since he was in God’s presence. How much does he remember? How much has he forgotten” Then I began to look at the others on the bus.
There was a girl that was maybe 20 years removed from heaven; a man probably 50 years since he’d seen God, and a man so old you knew he had to be on his way home( and I don’t mean the bus ride.)

We are so used to thinking of this life as a journey TO heaven, that we forget that’s where we came FROM. Dylan Thomas starts out his “Poem in October” : “It was my thirtieth year to heaven…” He could have just as easily written ‘thirtieth year from heaven.”

Yes, the longer we’re gone, the less we remember. As Rabbi Herschel said, ”Man is the messenger who has forgotten the message.”