Parabola 38:2 Summer 2013

Heaven & Hell

This is Parabola’s 150th issue. Publishing four times a year, it has taken more than thirty-seven years to reach this milestone, achieved through the contributions of countless writers, artists, editors, publishers, designers, printers, and those who work with them. Above all, it has taken the steady support of the magazine’s readers, year after year, decade upon decade. To celebrate this anniversary, we picked a theme dense with meaning. Heaven and Hell are extraordinary concepts. For many of us they are, as The Encyclopedia of Religion defines them, “symbolic expressions in various religious traditions.” Expressions of “a state of bliss ... or an abode of deity” and “a state of spiritual impoverishment and ... an abode of evil.” For others they are places, as real as earth and sky...

---

Heaven and Hell

VOLUME 38 NUMBER 2 SUMMER 2013

8 THE NIGHT I DIED Tracy Cochran
A brush with death leads to a glimpse of Light

16 EMANATIONS OF DIVINITY Lee van Laer
The wonders of Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights

20 HEARING THE CRIES OF THE WORLD Mark Nepo
The many blessings of opening to suffering

28 SOMETHING UNDERSTOOD Doug Thorpe
Heaven and Hell with Dante and the evangelicals

34 ESCAPE FROM HELL Renée Thorne
Growing up in fire and brimstone

44 WHAT MAKES A LIFE SIGNIFICANT William James
A utopian community—so what’s the problem?

54 PARABOLA: 150 ISSUES
A celebration of 150 issues of Parabola, through our covers

62 THE MEANING OF TRADITION
From our first issue, a conversation with Huston Smith

70 A LEAF FROM HEAVEN Hans Christian Andersen
A tale of Heaven come to earth

78 TRANSIT Diane Wolkstein
From Heaven to Hell and back again

82 REMEMBERING CONSUELO Paul Jordan-Smith
A tribute to Diane Wolkstein

epicycle

38 my heaven is where they are Vyasa | Hindu
Kenneth E. Lawrence, from a translation by Sangeeta Nandan

ARCS

48 is there really a heaven and hell?

POETRY
Three poems by Malcolm Guite on the Paradiso from the sequence

“On Reading the Commedia”

74 Look up

76 circle dance

77 the rose

tangents

84 ENDING THE BEELZEBUB WARS:

BEYOND “US AND THEM” Stephen A. Grant
A plea for harmony within the Fourth Way

94 AWAKENING TO GIFTISM, IN PUNE Nipun Mehta
Transformation, one simple act at a time

106 ROLLING IN THE DEEP Laura Majorie Miller
Young filmmaker Lisa Stock tackles Dante’s Inferno

BOOK REVIEWs

112 HAMMARSKJöLD: A LIFE
Roger Lipsey | reviewed by James George

120 THE SPIRITUAL TEACHINGS OF THE PROPHET
Tayeb Chouiref, Fatima Casewit (ed.), Edin Q. Lohja (tr.) |

reviewed by Peter Samsel

128 ENDPOINT

---

Parabola is published quarterly by the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition. Each issue includes: * Original articles and interviews on mythology, spiritual practice, religious tradition, literature, popular culture, science, and the arts * Retellings of traditional stories, myths, and fairy tales * Book reviews * Comments on contemporary film, theater, music, art, and events * Artwork ranging from the traditional to the contemporary

(Daimon distributes Parabola only outside America.
On the American continent please order directly from: www.parabola.org.)