Are There Couches in Heaven?

Some years back, Kevin Costner’s movie Dances with Wolves made a big splash.  The title, if I remember rightly, was taken from the Native American name given to Costner’s character.  It’s a lovely name, isn’t it?  I like its resonance, the image it invokes, and that the name includes a verb.

The other day, I thought that if I had a Native American name, I’d like it to be Walks with God.  But I had to quickly admit that if the name were to reflect the reality of my life, the more accurate name would have to be Sits on Couch or Stares at Screens or Phone Talker or maybe even Time Dawdler.

In that elevated place I inhabit within my mind, Walks with God so appeals – for do not we all walk with our God?  And isn’t that a lovely image of movement and being?

But in the daily reality of my life lived, I have to admit I spend far too much time on the couch and I am (not so slowly) starting to resemble that tuberous veg we call the potato, more’s the pity.

Maybe I could combine the two – reality and imagining – which leaves me with Sits on Couch with God, which sounds a bit weird, I have to say.  I know the Genesis account reminds us that God, even God, rests.  But it’s far from my imagining of God, this sitting, frittering, way of being.  God, in my mind’s eye, is purposeful, moving.  God, you see, as I would understand God, is a verb and not a passive one at that.

Maybe I’m just too Calvinist to imagine God in repose on a couch, watching silly television, passing the time.  But I don’t think so.  I think that while God’s movement is filled with stillness, God’s stillness is filled with movement.

So are there couches in heaven?  Somehow, I don’t think so.

Guess I better get walking.