"Heaven" has different Signs - to me

"Heaven" has different Signs—to me—
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place—
And when again, at Dawn,

A mighty look runs round the World
And settles in the Hills—
An Awe if it should be like that
Upon the Ignorance steals—

The Orchard, when the Sun is on—
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make—
Some Carnivals of Clouds—

The Rapture of a finished Day—
Returning to the West—
All these—remind us of the place
That Men call "paradise"—

Itself be fairer—we suppose—
But how Ourself, shall be
Adorned, for a Superior Grace—
Not yet, our eyes can see— 

Emily Dickinson

     Some time in my thirties I was told to start greeting the sun.  I am a child of sunset, born at 5:11 PM, a month past the equinox.  The gloaming is my time; Fall my season.  

     "Why the sunrise," I asked.

     "The sunrise opens the eyes to the world.  Greet the sunrise every morning and you are prepared to see heaven all around."  

     She was right, although it took more than sunrise to bring me to that place.  It took hip surgery and heartache; it took a heart attack and bypass surgery.  I had to come close to death to understand heaven all around us, to see with those kind of eyes.  But even wasn't enough.   It wasn't until I found myself longing for death two years later, that I finally made the leap and changed my life, at last choosing life over death. 

     Now, like Dickinson, I am coming to know the signs of the day.  I am coming to understand what they tell me, the heaven they reveal.  And I come to sunsets differently, as gateways to the rapture, not something to put off, but here every day if we only stop and look.  Every night now, I stop and look.  The ocean gave me that, a month of sunsets so spectacular, so matter of fact, they have woven themselves into my very being.  Love gave me that, days which start in joy and end in it.  There are people who know this instinctively,who see heaven on earth every day and find ways to record it- my friend Kathee and her photographs, my friend Arturo and his paintings, Emily Dickinson and her poetry.  Some of us have to learn it the hard way.  I don't think it matter how we come to have clear eyes, to see the signs of heaven all around, just that we do.  May it always be so.