to be perfectly beautiful. Each one is a part of a larger picture only the Lord can
see in its entirety, the Maximus Homo of heaven.
Heaven is the most perfect representation of the human form, and since
the population of heaven is always growing, its perfection is always increasing.
The more angels there are, the more uses take form from the Divine love and
wisdom emanating from the Lord, and the more heaven’s beauty grows. In
a sense, then, heaven’s perfection is its imperfection, or the fact that it can
always be improved. Each new “imperfect” person who enters it adds to its
overall perfection, which only the Lord can fully comprehend.
I remember a scene from a movie, The Last Samurai, in which one of the
main characters, a Japanese warrior, is standing beside a large cherry tree in
full flower in a beautiful Japanese garden. “A perfect flower is a rare thing to
find,” he says. “You could spend your whole life looking for one and it would
not be a wasted life.”
Later in the movie, near the end, on another spring day after a great and
terrible battle, as that man lies mortally wounded on the battlefield he looks
up and at the edge of the field sees a rain of pink blossoms drifting down from
flowering trees, and with his dying breath says: “They’re all perfect.”
The Rev. Walter E. Orthwein is retired and works part time as
Spiritual Editor of New Church Life. In his active ministry he
served in Detroit and Oak Arbor, Michigan, and as a visiting
minister, and also taught in Bryn Athyn College of the New
Church and its Theological School. He and his wife, Kathy
(Williams), live in Bryn Athyn.
Contact: [email protected]
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