If you envisioned something in your last life, you can fully do that here. Not “do,” but “have done.” For, to picture a deed in Paradise is to enact it, is to instantly recall it. That is a paradox of God—He/She has never been an entity dwelling in Present tense. God is perfect Memory, the energy to Play, plus endless Time. Anything that was ever forgotten (that is, absolutely everything) eventually finds us here, in our ecstatic Lost and Found. But I get ahead of myself, or behind …

If you nursed one unacted wish below, if you loved someone who ignored you, here that yen has already been fulfilled to the point of sorest satiation. Find it well-stowed in the gelid honeyed aspic of collective memory. This is not the zone of Desires Transacted. Heaven is the zone of Desires Recalled. Maybe you wish you had once wisely broken a rule. —Done.

Example? I might say, oh, “Homemade lemon meringue pie, cooling on a Rhode Island windowsill before its browned peaks even get to harden toward stickiness. A confection made twenty minutes back by your own mom who’ll be dead (drunk driver, laundry truck) before supper time—her final creation and gift, steam rising, set in the kitchen window on a tea towel, with a view beyond, of your backyard’s blooming fruit trees. You wander home from school. Mom’s car is gone. You see Mom’s pie waiting. Her baked goods—good, as usual—smell of her standard grated lemon rind, all held by the lightest possible crust. And you, age nine, aching to sneak a wedge, eucharist. In life, you did not. The wreck happened. You could hear it from the house. Aunts converged. Casseroles arrived. The pie was first refrigerated then—as newer treats swarmed in—‘tossed,’ uneaten. But now, in Paradise, wise wisher, you get to taste both it and her.” There, I hear those new lips smacking.

O but I love the sound of your laughter. You cannot imagine the music of first laughs hatching into light here. I spent much of my earthly energy loving others. Know what they did? They all left me. Coming in through the backdoor, I dreaded seeing the note again on the kitchen table, “You were nice and always gentle and so I am not sure why, but I do know I’m gone for good.” The dresser drawers half emptied, our bundled savings fully cleared.

But this time, for all time, for me, it’s always Hello. Hello, forever. Thank you, Gracious God … Such pleasure. I’ve been volunteering for this duty since … you’ve no idea …

If, sudden friends, you find you’re itching under those new wing blades? that’s usual. Not your fault. It comes from burning toward your present purified un-matter. It comes via simple sea salts so missing their other cruder, merely chemical, reality. The early need to scratch is just one of Transformation-retooling’s minor techno-glitches.