Ye Angells bright, pluck from your Wings a Quill.

Make me a pen thereof that best will write.

Lend me your fancy, and Angellick skill

To treat this Theme, more rich than Rubies bright.

—from "And All Drunk the Same Spirituall Drinke," by Edward Taylor

Heading north to our house in south St. Pete, you can choose between two small avenues, Taylor or Edwards, and when I drive on them I like to think they're paired to celebrate two great Puritan figures, the poet Edward Taylor (1642-1729) and the preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Crazy idea, but dreaming's not illegal.

In 1741, Jonathan Edwards enthralled and terrified his Connecticut parishioners by preaching that we're all hanging over the fires of Hell by a thin strand of a spider's web. "The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string," he told them. Whoa!

In The Man Who Wasn't There, Ed Crane (played by Billy Bob Thornton), strapped in the electric chair for murder, thinks about heaven in a voice-over: "Maybe the things I don't understand will become clearer there…"

Most of us, lacking the flames of Calvinism that clarified life for Taylor and Edwards, fantasize like Ed. Life is so confusing, everything's so… unfair, that only the possibility of a benign afterlife can make it seem worth the effort.

The idea that there's a real place called "heaven" is easy to ridicule, and a spate of books — not to mention decades of New Yorker cartoons — have had fun with fundamentalist Christian and Islamic visions, especially from the Unholy Trinity: Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape (2010), Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (2008) and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great (2007). The fact that these are best-sellers in our "Christian country" says a lot about the spiritual pot bubbling in our midst, unless sinners just read more. It's hard to measure atheism, but some polls estimate those willing to declare themselves "non-religious" to be about 15 percent. Many more Americans seem to be acting like the Italians and Poles, who call themselves Catholic, but pay no attention to the doctrines; they like the music, the architecture and the general feeling of spirituality.

Years ago, feeling our kids should have some theological education to form their own ideas about heaven, we took them to Sunday School at the Unitarian Church. A bad example, I'd pick up the paper and an English muffin from the now-defunct Owl Café, and sit on a bench at Mirror Lake waiting to pick them up after class. I liked the Unitarian sermons, but they were too much like my literature and Great Books seminars. On weekends, I needed to come down from the heights.

One time, our son Tim told us they learned about the prophets. Apparently the class was asked how to spell "prophet," so Tim raised his hand and spelled out "p-r-o-f-i-t" — a sure sign the little capitalist hadn't been raised properly, which was all our fault.

But I don't think the idea of heaven is silly.

I think it's scary.

In a nuclear world, the idea that we're better off dead becomes increasingly dangerous. If there's a heaven, and no hell, there's nothing to fear. Suicide bombers of all stripes go to their death confident their rage is righteous, and their God will reward them. Today they're mostly Islamic — though we've had the IRA, anti-abortionists and other extremist examples — but that's because, economically, politically and militarily speaking, the Muslim religions are weak and Christianity strong. Ironically, these resentful murderers agree with an old Christian saying: "The blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church" (Tertullian, 160-230).

Our leaders need to tamp down the anger and fear, along with the certainty, simmering in the religious world today. Spirituality is necessary for a healthy life, but we should embrace it like Edward Taylor, who was religious and modest at the same time. A great America should be free, fearless and generous. Let them build that mosque.

Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleat;

Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.

Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate.And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee…

—from "Huswifery" by Edward Taylor

Peter Meinke is the Poet's Laureate of St. Petersburg.

poet's notebook, peter meinke, jeanne meinke, st. petersburg, poet lauriate, edward taylor, aging, death, the afterlife, calvinism, jonathan edwards,

This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2010.