I recently attended a lecture by senior members of the Indonesian police about a network of terrorists who called themselves Muslims. Among the Power Point slides presented were mug shots of suicide bombers taken after the fact. Their explosive belts destroyed their bodies but left their heads intact, and the face of each was frozen at the moment of death with an expression of surprise, as if they had just seen or experienced something that really was quite unexpected. Did they behold the gates of Paradise, as they were taught they would by the people who recruited and instructed them in an aberrant version of Islam? Or did they glimpse the depths of hell as they stole away the lives of innocents in their campaign of horror? Where are the souls of those bombers now?

Surely they are nowhere, in the physical sense of a celestial or subterranean locale. If we are talking about a literal cartography of the cosmos, then, no, I certainly do not believe in heaven or hell. Nor, for that matter, do I believe that the word “now” has much relevance. Eternity is not something you check on your watch. If those self-executed murderers’ spirits endured in any way, they were beyond the measurement of present or future time.

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The debate about the language in which we learn and express our faith is often misleading, I think, because amid all the talk of accessibility and historical accuracy, the most important word -- poetry -- is rarely brought into the discussion.

We easily associate music with worship, thinking we mean the power of melodies and rhythms sung by choirs and congregations. But the original music of the great faiths is in the words of the holy books and of the prayers. And that is vital, because, as most of us understand, you don't really "explain" music, you feel it, and the experience of great music is transcendent. It is also memorable -- indeed, unforgettable. So, too, with great poetry. These qualities are not always lost in translation, but when the new language is merely literal and utilitarian it becomes a barrier to the sense of exaltation that many worshippers are seeking.

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