A religious revelation about polyamory

The first glimmer of my poly beliefs came when I was a very little boy. My mom told me that a neighbor, whose wife had died and gone to Heaven, had remarried. I puzzled to myself over a serious question. When they all finally met up in Heaven, which one would be the real wife, and which would be left cruelly and tragically alone? The only logical answer, I concluded, was that they would all love each other together.

It was years before I realized that not just angels, but we poor humans, can sometimes make it work right here.

Poly relationship counselor Page Turner, who runs the Poly.Land website and wrote her fictionalized autobiography Poly Land, went with a partner to her grandfather's Catholic funeral. The priest who officiated was thinking like little me, and Page wonders why the religious are scared to think the next logical thought. She's a very good writer.

A Polyamorous Heaven: Funerals Don’t Come With Trigger Warnings

By Page Turner

I’m sitting up as straight as I can on the pew while my mother sobs on my left. Skyspook is on my right, his hands folded in his lap.

We’re sitting in the front row. My grandmother sits on the other side of my mother. All 5′ 10″ of her in a gray pantsuit. My grandmother doesn’t cry. Not that I can see anyway. Skyspook later tells me that he can see it in smaller expressions on her face. ...

Clyde Robinson / CC BY

...The priest delivers a sermon about Christ and eternal life, inviting us to pray for my grandfather’s soul so that he may be reunited with all his loved ones in heaven and that we, too, may join him and all others we love in the afterlife.

All others? I wonder suddenly.

Because, you see, this is my grandmother’s second time being widowed. ... Any heaven that they’re part of will be filled with multiple loves.

The pastor knows all of this. ... In that moment, it occurs to me that the heaven the pastor describes is rather polyamorous.

And thinking back on conversations I’ve had with others — some of them very religious — few to none have had a problem with widowed folks remarrying (provided at least a short grieving period had passed). They don’t think of this eventual reunion in heaven as awkward for all involved.

Meanwhile, nonmonogamy on Earth — especially the consensual, honest kind — is regarded by those same folks as the work of Satan.

...As the pastor blesses the sacramental bread and wine, I wonder why we consider what is standard in heaven to be so far beneath us here on Earth.

Read her whole, longer post (October 23, 2017).

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On a related subject, an article on Loving More's site: Grief and Loss Among the Polys, by John Ullman.

...Those of us who have practiced polyamory through our lifetime must be grateful for the abundance of love in our lives. But having those wonderful other loves means we must accept a little more grieving as well. ...

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