The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.2000, Blaðsíða 35

Vol. 55 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
333
Almost heaven
by Rev. Wayne B. Arnason
"Gimli," loosely translated, means
"Heaven." When you visit Gimli, a little town
on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba
you would not necessarily know right away
that you were in Heaven. My family has roots
in Gimli a hundred years deep. Half of us live
within there or within an hour's drive, and the
half that is scattered around the continent try
to come back most years. None of us, howev-
er, would readily confess that we live in
Heaven.
I can't say I'm sure how many of the res-
idents of Gimli even believe in Heaven. They
are supposed to. Most of Gimli's permanent
residents are either Icelanders or Ukrainians.
The Icelanders are mostly Lutherans and the
Ukrainians are mostly Catholics. Heaven is
one of those things people who are Lutherans
and Catholics are supposed to take for grant-
ed. In this day and age, though, church affili-
ation is no longer a reliable predictor of what
you really believe. Even the Gimli Icelanders
who are active Lutherans don't talk much
about Heaven. A survey of the local taverns
would probably produce a lot of skepticism
about whether it exists at all. Among the
believers, the old boys who drink at the Gimli
Hotel have mostly given up on the prospect of
getting there at all, and the young fellows who
drink at the Viking Motor Inn aren’t sure they
want to get there because they don't expect
they'll find any of their friends. I guess it all
depends on what your concept of Heaven
might be.
Many people come to ministers and say
to them: "I don't believe in God!" Modern the-
ological schools teach you how to respond to
that statement. You're supposed to say: "Well,
why don't you sit down and tell me what kind
of God you don't believe in. Chances are I
don't believe in that God either."
It's the same with Heaven. Among all the
different ways that people over the centuries
have thought about Heaven, I find the Viking
vision the most complex and the most enter-
taining. The Viking ancestors of the Gimli
Icelanders envisioned Heaven in two stages,
one stage that occurred before the end of the
world and one stage after. The stage before
the end of the world was Valhalla, a great hall
filled with tables groaning with food. Around
it sat all the fabled warriors who had fallen in
battle, eating and drinking and carousing until
the time came for that final apocalyptic battle
in which the universe would return to fire and
water. If Heaven was going to be like this -
one big wedding dinner, where you could
party with your friends and relatives until the
end of the world - maybe the folks in Gimli
would be more concerned about what they
had to do to get there.
The Viking view of Heaven has not pre-
vailed in our world. It was too many years of
higher education that did it in for me.
Contemplating Heaven from the learned
perch of a Harvard-trained theolog, it is not a
great feast that comes to my mind when I
think of Heaven, but images abstract and sub-
lime. Heaven is a place outside of time, where
beautiful and beloved people and places stay
just the way they are. Heaven is a place where
all creatures dwell together in harmony, the
peaceable kingdom, the place where the lions
lay down with the lambs. Heaven is a place
where we will want for nothing, a place of no
hunger and no thirst, a place where all our
wishes will be fulfilled. Can Gimli possibly
live up to its name?
When I was in my twenties, the town did
live up to my first image of Heaven, at least it
did in my mind. At a time in my life when
every year seemed to bring momentous
changes and decisions, Gimli stayed pretty
much the same. The center of town still had
the same buildings on its four corners: The
Post Office, the Bank, the Lakeside Inn, and
Tergesen's General Store. The Royal
Canadian Air Force Jet, our monument to the
former Air Force Base, was mounted firmly
on its pedestal at the intersection of 1st