Isn’t Avalon simply an Arthurian allusion to heaven? It may have arisen from Celtic legends. The Celts believed that there are thin places in this our present home, earth. It’s not hard for me to believe in ‘thin places’.
Heaven…
What will Heaven be like?
Those of us who have had near death experiences have had a glimpse. You can read of others who have had similar touches with the True Reality. They basically describe the same things: about Light, warmth, peace and indescribable completeness.
This present reality here on earth is described as a ‘Fabric’ of ‘Time and Space’. There are ‘thin places’ in that fabric where some get a glimpse of the ‘True Reality’. Near death experiences are such thin places. (That is what the ‘Inklings’ tried to capture in their writings…IMHO)
Jesus called it ‘Paradise’ when the convicted men who were crucified with him spoke to Jesus:
“And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
Luke 23:39-43 KJV
Long ago I quit believing that life is just a series of unrelated ‘accidental events’. There is no such thing as coincidences. There is a purpose to everything. That I do believe and so did Jan. In the years leading up to her death, she found and read several books written by authors who had die and come back to life. Several of those authors were physicians. Their descriptions were of ‘Paradise.’ After Jan read those books, I did. This was not an accidental coincidence. We were meant to read those books. For that I am thankful. In her final days, maybe as long as two weeks before, Jan was ready to ‘Go Home.’ She was ready to have ‘the stone to be rolled away.’ In hind sight she stayed long enough to say good bye to those she loved…I wept hard and bitterly when I told her she was going to be with the Lord…My weeping was selfish. It was for myself and my loss not her death!
In those last days Jan and I talked of what Heaven would be like. At one point I asked if she thought that it would be like Scotland where some of our ancestors came from. We both had loved our trip to Scotland. She thought then said, “It will be more like Montana.” Sighing we both agreed that ‘Heaven’ would be beyond our most vividly wonderful ‘Imaginings.’ This video of Avalon may be an Arthurian vision of ‘Paradise.’
Amended on August 21, 2020….
It amazes me sometimes the way life unfolds…On July 29th the song ‘Shores of Avalon’ was playing on Celtic Spirit Radio during my daily biking on my Schwinn Airdyne. The song took my mind and imagination to a peaceful solitary place. CS Lewis, Chesterton and MacDonald believe in our imagination that we are closest to the Spirit of the Lord. Maybe it is His Spirit that leads us to those special places?
Discovering a YouTube video the thought came that maybe this is not just about the Legend of King Arthur but maybe there is a deeper significance to this place called Avalon. Maybe it was an allusion to Paradise or Heaven.
Last night reading “The Seaboard Parish” apparently George MacDonald imagined the same ‘mystical presence’ of Avalon. For here is a scene in the novel when Rev. Walton and their artist friend, Mr. Percivale, carried his invalid daughter, Connie, on a litter to an overlook of Tintagel Island with its castle and chapel ruins:
“For the next ten minutes we stood in absolute silence. We had set Connie down on the grass again, but propped up so that she could see through the doorway. And she lay in still ecstasy. But there was more to be seen ere we descended. There was the rest of the little islet with its crop of down-grass, on which the horses of all the knights of King Arthur’s round table might have fed for a week—yes, for a fortnight, without, by any means, encountering the short commons of war. There were the ruins of the castle so built of plates of the laminated stone of the rocks on which they stood, and so woven in or more properly incorporated with the outstanding rocks themselves, that in some parts I found it impossible to tell which was building and which was rock—the walls themselves seeming like a growth out of the island itself, so perfectly were they in harmony with, and in kind the same as, the natural ground upon which and of which they had been constructed. And this would seem to me to be the perfection of architecture. The work of man’s hands[…]”…
“Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from three sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over “the Atlantic’s level powers.” It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had there been such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful citadel of nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be blown, into the deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic needle-rock, and round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her mother seated in what they call Arthur’s chair—a canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all solvents—air and water; till at length it was time that we should take our leave of the few sheep that fed over the place, and issuing by the gothic door, wind away down the dangerous path to the safe ground below.”
Here is a video of Tintagel Island an its ruins…Truly a ‘Thin Place”…
My Grandma Smith was from Cornwall…