Years ago, I was startled to realize that many of my students were afraid of heaven. At first I was shocked, but upon reflection the source of their fear became obvious. If they imagine heaven as an interminable church service, surrounded by strangers in uncomfortable pews listening to sometimes less-than-soaring songs and sermons, then of course extending that ad infinitum would elicit horror, not joyful anticipation. Who wouldn’t prefer the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll of hell to the endless sanctimonious harp-playing of heaven?

At the heart of their fear was a failure of imagination, a failure of spiritually transformational meditations on the biblical images of heaven: feasting, singing, mansions, etc., which depict post-mortem life in blessed community. The failure was ours—the church and theology professors—not theirs.

Augustine invites us to imagine heaven in community with concentration and clarity. As his mother Monica neared death, they undertook a spiritual thought-experiment to imagine heaven: “We were alone, conferring very intimately…we inquired between ourselves in the light of present truth, the Truth which is yourself, what the eternal life of the saints would be like…And as we talked and panted for it, we just touched the edge of it by the utmost leap of our hearts” (conf. 9.10.23-34; tr. Boulding). What a beautiful portrait of doing theology in community, in the ultimate moments of life, with a view to our future participation in heavenly bliss. Augustine and Monica share a foretaste of the beatific vision—the face-to-face encounter with God in the afterlife within the community of saints—and it prepares Monica for her impending death and Augustine for life without her. Like all mystical moments, it was ephemeral and incomplete. Nevertheless, it impacted them deeply.

Hamlet muses on the mysteries of the afterlife: “In that sleep of death what dreams may come?” (Hamlet III.1). It takes a philosophical temperament for the waking to imagine dreamscapes, just as it does for the living to imagine the afterlife. We encounter many obstacles, including an innate aversion to facing our own mortality. We resist thinking about death and so we neglect to reflect on what lies beyond it, the “undiscovered country,” where all eventually enter, and where countless generations have migrated before we ever twinkled in our parents’ eyes. Only when the unwelcome and ineluctable reality of mortality—ours or a loved one’s—forces itself upon us do we venture into that unmapped territory, and often with fear and trembling. With no ready navigational tools beyond dubious first-person accounts of brief sojourns above or below, we are left stumbling in the dark, susceptible to confusions, projections, and baseless speculations.

So let us, with Augustine and Monica, imagine heaven together more. Like night lightning, perhaps we can catch a glimpse of it, even its outer courts, to bring comfort and bolster faith as the end nears.

How might we imagine heaven in community? It depends, of course, on the context. In college and university courses, we could create an assignment where students engage notions of the afterlife artistically: through poem, music, fine art, and other creative mediums. In church environments, we could create adult educational studies that explore biblical and theological conceptions of the afterlife. Interpersonally, we could intentionally interrogate ideas together, perhaps during spiritual retreats and other spiritually fertile situations. What would be more conducive to mystical flights than deep spiritual conversation around a campfire overlooking a still lake with the stars sparkling overhead? We need to elevate our spiritual aesthetics so that when the ultimate moments of life arrive—so often unexpectantly—it will not be our first time thinking, praying, and feeling our way through the life of the soul after it has shed its mortal coil.