Heavenly Hopes

Among the wonderful Christmas gifts I received this year was the latest version of the "gospel from the coast" as Jimmy Buffet refers to his albums. The most recent release was timed well for Christmas sales. Last year his album was a Christmas album but this year's Christmas album was just typical Buffet music. Like most artist who survive a long time, he has a very comfortable format, formula, and this album does the formula very well.

What I enjoy about the songs and music of Jimmy Buffet is that there are some very interesting comments about life and thus about faith and hope. His best known song about Margarittaville, for me, is really a confession of sin. "Some people say there is a woman to blame, but I know ... it is" and he blames other people on the first two verses, then he says it maybe my fault. The last verse ends "but I know it is my own damn fault." Finally he recognizes his own responsibility.

This year's album has a number of suggestions about life and faith. In one song he suggests that if we are going "to fly" we have to learn to trust "the wings that we can't see." We must launch forth in faith in the existence of support that we can not see or validate by looking. In another song he declares that "Life is just a water ballet."

It is in this song,"Beautiful Swimmers" that he expresses a vision of heaven for him. He says if he had enough money he would buy us all, every man, woman and child on earth, a mask and a snorkel, and we would fall swim towards this paradise place. "Life is just a water ballet." Now that may not be street of gold and McMansions in the sky, but it is a dream of perfect. It is not a vision of seventy virgins waiting for you if you die in a religious war.

The Scriptures say that the Kingdom of God is entered through a narrow door, and is hard to enter. The visions of heaven for each of us have a way of suggesting, I think, what that narrow door may be for each of us. It is not necessarily going to be the same narrow door for all of us. I am not sure I want a mask and a snorkel and I certainly am not sure I want to spend my life scuba diving. But Jimmy thinks that that is what we all need and everything would be wonderful if we were all snorkeling. But I do think that we come into the Kingdom of God when we finally find that one thing that matters most to us and are willing to give and to give up all that we have for that one thing. There is something about "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and these things shall be added unto you."