A Nearly Perfect Heaven
- Michael Kennedy
- 22 hours ago
- 7 min read
"He ended: and a kind of spell
Upon the silent listeners fell.
His solemn manner and his words
Had toched the deep, mysterious chords
That vibrate in each human breast alike."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from Tales of a Wayside Inn
It has many names.
Some of us call it heaven: an everlasting garden, a realm beyond sorrow where light never fades, love is never lost, and every living thing exists in perfect belonging and in perfect harmony.
Across languages and traditions, its name and meanings differ. They may not correspond precisely with the Christian understanding of heaven, but each definition points toward something divine, blessed, or transcendent... a place beyond suffering and beyond the limitations of our earthly lives.
The Land of the Soul
For me, heaven is the land of the soul. It’s a place where the world is nearly perfect, as defined by the soul experiencing it.
For the writer and poet, the right words drift from the wind and trees, finding their way onto endless blank pages with perfect rhythm, impact and resonance. There’s always another feeling waiting to be expressed. Another reader who needs a lift.
William Blake imagined something of this infinite vision:
“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
For the painter and photographer, everything, from Blake’s grain of sand to the most luminous vistas, is full of emotion, and rich with possibility.
In the land of the soul, the painter possesses every color and every tool needed to fill an endless succession of blank canvases. The photographer discovers within every frame a spectacular composition, one after another: light, shade, subject, and moment coming together as if the solar system itself has paused to be seen.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton envisioned such a place:
“We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth;
there is a realm where the rainbow never fades,
where the stars will be spread before us
like islands that slumber on the ocean,
and where the beings that pass before us like shadows
will stay in our presence forever.”
Here, in the land of the soul, there’s a universal language in which no word, gesture, color, or note is missing. Beauty is everywhere and effortlessly seen, felt and heard. Everything possesses meaning, and everything has a purpose.
But what makes this divine place nearly perfect instead of... perfect?
Absolute perfection eventually become its own kind of emptiness. For example, if every poem arrived already completed, would the poet still feel the exhilaration of discovering the rhythm, sound, and imagery of each new line? If every photograph were flawless before the shutter was pressed, would the photographer still rise before dawn to find that extraordinary sunrise?
If everything is perfect, nothing can be improved. What then inspires us, challenges us, or calls us toward something greater? Heaven without possibility may be peaceful, but it would become still and dull.
In the land of the soul there's no cruelty, humiliation, jealousy, or fear of failure. No one’s advancement requires another person’s defeat. There's no scarcity demanding that one person loses so another wins. But there's still aspiration.
In the land of the soul, there's good and honorable competition, the kind in which another person’s excellence invites our own. We race not to diminish one another, but to discover how fast we can run together. We create not for applause, but to show others what's possible. We challenge one another while remaining invested in one another’s success.
Imagine two painters standing before the same magnificent landscape with their pockets full of brushes, and their easels ready for the magic to begin. Each sees something the other cannot. Neither painting is declared the perfect one because each painting reveals a different truth and perspective. Inspired by the other’s vision, both artists return to their canvases with more curiosity, delight, and reason to improve the quality of their work.
Imagine writers exchanging stories, musicians answering one another with new melodies and riffs, athletes testing the outer limits of their abilities, and thinkers pursuing questions whose answers open the door to even greater questions.
No achievement is final. Every summit reveals another summit. And beyond every tree is another magnificent tree. If this heaven were a perfect place there would be no need for aspiration, no need for honorable competition. No need for curiosity or wonder. What fun is there in that?
But in the land of the soul, improvement is never concerned solely with the self. The greatest measure of progress is what our growth makes possible for someone else.
Knowledge is acquired so it can be shared. Strength is developed so it can protect. Beauty is exposed so it can awaken. Wisdom is gathered so it can guide.
This could be the essential resistance this heaven requires: the distance between what we are and what we might still become. Not a painful distance. Not one burdened by inadequacy or shame. But one of encouragement... something on the horizon forever drawing us forward.
Here, we remain unfinished and imperfect, not because of our flaws or shortcomings, but because we are infinite.
Perfection implies a motionless state in which everything has reached completion. But here there's freedom to keep becoming. To grow without fear. To strive without envy. To compete without hatred. And to succeed without leaving anyone behind. This heaven isn’t perfect precisely because it never stops improving.
Do we really need to wait until death to begin creating it?
Every time another person’s excellence inspires us, we bring a fragment of heaven to earth. Every time we use our gifts to improve the quality of someone else’s life, we tighten the distance between this world and the land of the soul.
"But there is much beauty here,
because there is much beauty everywhere."
If we really want the "everlasting garden" to grow more vibrant and come closer to us in this life we can start by finding and doing something worth improving. Something that elevates our family and our community.
Develop the gifts that have been entrusted to you. Welcome the people who challenge you to become better. Compete with honor. Create with generosity. Climb toward your highest possibilities and, whenever you can, reach back and help someone else climb with you.
In a perfect world there’s nothing left to do.
But together, in the land of the soul, we create a nearly perfect world in which there’s always something more to do, more to learn, more to give, and more to enjoy.
"The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
G. K. Chesterton offered another way of imagining heaven. To him, heaven wouldn't be an eternity of sameness, but an endless encounter with wonder. We wouldn't become bored because our ability to see, and to be astonished, would be fully restored. We would experience beauty, love, truth, and even God with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child, always discovering something we had never understood before. Heaven, then, wouldn't be perfect because nothing perfect ever changes. It would be nearly perfect because there's no endgame to wonder.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow imagined heaven not as a destination, but as a reunion. To him, those we've lost aren't truly gone, they've simply entered the next room before us... a larger, lighter room where they patiently await our arrival. Heaven, in this sense, is a warm and welcoming household where separation finally ends, broken families are made whole, and love resumes without the shadow of another goodbye or heartache.
But Chesterton's and Longfellow’s heaven, like that of the land of the soul, wasn't considered a place of endless rest or unchanging perfection. It was a realm of continued awakening. A place where the soul could still grow, learn, discover, and rise toward a greater understanding. Freed from the limitations of the human mind and body, we wouldn't cease becoming, we would finally become capable of understanding truths that remain beyond our reach here.
Each of these descriptions paint heaven as nearly perfect because not everything gets completed. In this "everlasting garden" nothing meaningful ever has to end. Peace, beauty, and fulfillment already exist all around us if we can only clear our minds enough to notice.
David Epstein makes a clever and convincing argument in his book, Inside the Box: creativity doesn't always flourish in the absence of limits. Often, it's the limit itself that awakens our ingenuity. A musician creates within a scale. A poet wrestles with the boundaries of a sonnet. A Juniper Tree, confined by granite, wind, drought, snow, and elevation, somehow becomes more extraordinary because of what it overcomes.
So why would heaven be entirely without constraints?
In the land of the soul, limitations aren't punishments, but invitations. There are problems worth solving, skills worth developing, beauty worth discovering... and worthy goals that require patience, imagination, and effort. We don't receive everything simply because we desire it. We still have to create, cooperate, practice, negotiate, and occasionally begin again.
Without some resistance, what would summon our resourcefulness? Without uncertainty, what would become of curiosity? And without the possibility of falling short, what meaning would there be in getting better?
A nearly perfect heaven gives us everything we truly need, but not everything we could ever want. It leaves a little room unfinished. A little music unwritten. A few photos undeveloped. More mountains to climb. Just enough constraint to keep the imagination alive and eternity interesting.
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All photographs by Michael Kennedy (unless otherwise noted) / BlueWolfGallery.com
I’m Michael Kennedy, a resident of Olympic Valley, CA (in photo above with Nicola and Boo). I’m a writer and photographer and I love exploring nature and getting lost along the way. We live in a world that demands our attention and I just want to say thank you for your attention. If you enjoyed this post, please share with a friend. For more photos and stories visit BlueWolfGallery.com.
Beautiful, MK. Have an amazing week!