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"To hter I had never heard in Sheol It was soft, soothing, hter of angels, and I think I sang to her softly in response, rather naturally, and at this her soul exploded like a blossom, the way fleshly souls had exploded belohen they had learnt to love each other! She warmed to me and opened 'You are beautiful,' she whispered respectfully

"But hy are all these others in this place so unhappy, and why are you few here filled with peace and joy? Yes, I know, I have looked below And you are with those you love But so are all these others '

"We don't resent God anymore,' she said 'Any of us here We don't hate Him '

"The others do?'

"It's not that they hate Hi very careful with ive Him for all thisfor the world, for what's happened, and for this state of Sheol in which we languish But we can We have forgiven Hiiveness of God, that we have attained We accept that our lives have been wondrous experiences, and worth the pain and the suffering, and we cherish now the joy we knew, and the iven Hi it, not punishing the bad or rewarding the good, or whatever else it is that all these souls, living and dead, expect of Hiive Hireat secret about how all this pain could coood And if He doesn't want to tell, well, He is God But whatever, we forgive Hih we know He may never care about any of us, any more than He cares for the pebbles on a beach below '

"I was speechless I sat very still, letting these souls of their own volition gather aroundsoul, the soul of a child, said:

"It see us into the world to be murdered as ere, all of us¡ªfor you see, we three here died in war¡ªbut we have forgiven Hi as beautiful as Life and Death, then he must Understand '

"You see,' said another soul to ain, if we had to And ould try to be better to each other andBut it orth it '

"Yes,' said another 'It took ive God for the world, but I did it before I died, and came to dwell here with these others And look, if you try hard, you'll see that we have arden It's hard for us We work only with our inations, but we are ood And we forgive Hiave us this much '

"Yes,' said another, 'that He gave us anything at all We are grateful and full of love for Hi, and we have seen soand with Misery, and they never knew the joys that we knew or kno '

"This isn't easy,' said another soul 'It's been a great struggleBut to ood, and to dance and sing was beautiful, and to run drunk through the rain was joyous; and beyond there lies a chaos, an absence, and I arateful that my eyes opened upon the world below and that I can remember it and see it from here '

"I thought for a long ti any of them, and they continued to talk to ht inthem In fact, the more I responded to their questions, the more they opened and seefully, the denser and more intense the declarations became

"I soon saw these people had coh kinship bound ether, that was not true with theht of their dead kin entirely in other realms of Sheol Others had never even laid eyes on thereeted at the moment of death by their lost ones! And these were people of the world and all its beliefs gathered here in this place where light was beginning to shine forth

"Your lives on earth, was there one common thread?' I asked finally They couldn't answer They really didn't know They had not questioned each other about their lives, and as I asked them quick, random questions, it became clear that there had been no thread!

Some of these people had been very rich, others poor, so but had known a golden prosperity and leisure in which they had grown to love Creation before they were even dead But I began to sense that if I wanted to, I could start to count these responses and evaluate them in soive God in various ways But very possibly one as better for this than another, infinitely more efficient Perhaps I couldn't be sure And for now I couldn't know