You will each find, upon more careful examination, that you’ve been minted into an envelope of white light. Your brand-new semi-see-through carapace is composed of cloud salt-granules. Your body-packet contains only about as much gummy connective tissue as is found in, say, one good-sized fertile earthly salamander, or, the glue of nine, count ’em, nine, commemorative stamps.

Touch your face. It is still yours. We, the angelic, might at first appear similar. But our essential personal differences have been archivally and lovingly preserved. God has quite the filing system. This is a Soul Museum. It stars only those souls that remained transitive and evolving, not ones long since exhausted, set and stuffed. Certain traces of the old world have come along with you intact. Many other saints will seem, like you, dark horses for eternal life. There is a woman here who seduced her son unknowingly. There is a someone present who murdered another. The top crowd is never quite what you expect. The skills rewarded here are not wage-earning ones. You were mainly kind to others. You were each very good with your hands. You were all pretty good in the sack.

Paradise would not deprive you of that most beautiful achievement constructed during your earthly sentence. I mean, of course, your hard-won Character. We all struggled to stay honest, we each endured a different set of trials. We are not just another army. Soon I will lead you into touching those few outward parts of yourself left utterly intact.

First, caress your face. Fingertips will hint: You now wear a cataracted helmet shielding your former features. You are pressing your new face. It encloses and eternally preserves the old one. —I must say, the new one looks far better. Believe me. I’m out here. I can see you.

The wings are there, of course, behind. Not to fret, don’t consider them a responsibility. Clear of your sight, they’re useful should you ever need them, like overabundant closet space. In time, we’ll be getting back to your wings.

I note your expression, 89th from the left, 140 rows back. I’m like you. On first arriving, I also found the whole concept of Wingedness a little retro. This far into time’s vertical future, “wing shapes” are more a tradition than a flight requirement. Since we can now time/space travel at will, such canaryish trappings strike me as coy, vestigial, and pesky as were appendixes last go-round. —But nobody asked.

Still, I am allowed to dissent. Crabbiness has always offered me a pleasure supernatural. So, God—having somehow slipped up and made me an angel—allows this level of crossness to grumble on forever. God’s really sorta good at this.

Heaven has been tailored to our former faults, not just our dull on-rolling merits. Bliss is never general.