Hello everyone. We are in the final stretch of the Pleasure Prints Blog Tour. Rounding out the tour is Multi-Genre Author Y. Correa who touches on the interpretation of paradise through the concept of Heaven with her work "Nalani at Heaven's Gates".
Have you ever Googled “What is Heaven?”
Answers come in abundance. There are as many interpretations as their are religions in the world.
What would happen if all the prophecies that so many religions base their theories on were never to take place? What if there was never an Armageddon, or a rapture, or the promised Paradise never came?
I find that faith is important. As important as food and water. But what if faith alone was not enough and the only thing that happened in our collective future was man made destruction? Then what?
Well, the answer is, that faith will persist. Faith is something that is etched into our collective DNA. Said faith isn’t always in a higher power, sometimes is it placed on fellow man. Sometimes it is put on places or things … actions, even. And that is okay. Everyone has to believe in something.
However, in Nalani’s (pronounces NĀy-lah-nee) world, her faith is placed on Heaven’s Gates. To her Heaven’s Gates is just like what Nirvana or Shangrila to us. It is a place where dreams come true. A place where everything she doesn’t have in her current world, exists. One of the things that Nalani really wants to see is art, for she has never seen so much as a snippet of anything creative. Her world is submersed in practicality—nothing exists that isn’t “useful” or purposeful. Self expression is an alien concept.
You see, creativity was dead and gone by the time she was born—lost to the destruction that ensued before the utopia she called home.
Tired of the lack of divergence and suffocated by the mundane but lavish society in which she lives, Nalani decides that she wants to seek Heaven’s Gates. No matter what the cost, Nalani decides that this is something she has to do for she’d been told that art was plentiful in Heaven’s Gates.
Enter the enterprise to find her way to her version of Arcadia and the mystery that is art.
As I wrote this story, I had one central thought …
Religion, as we know it today, is more about maintaining faith is something greater than oneself in order to combat the monotonous tedium of everyday life. Faith gives us hope that there is something more, something better, something worth fighting for. Faith gives us purpose.
Nalani’s faith in Heaven’s Gates was exactly that. Heaven’s Gates represented a greatness that she did not know. It was synonymous with transcendence.
However, as with most of us, with time and age comes wisdom. With wisdom comes understanding. And, with understanding comes appreciation. Sometimes we endeavor on an adventure that, at the end of its road, brings us back to what matters most.
Nalani learns a lot during her feat, she even gets answers to her biggest questions. And, through a rough and unexpected ride, Nalani learns one thing … Heaven has always been right at her fingertips.