One of these souls was in the shape of a woman, and it was not my Lilia at all, by the way, for I never did see her in any form again. But it was a woman who had died I think in midlife having had numerous children, some of whom were with her now, and some of whom were still below. This soul existed in a serenity that was almost becoming bright. That is, its evolution was so high on the invisible level that it was beginning to generate something like the Light of God!

'What makes you so different?' I asked this woman. 'What makes all of you here, clustered together in this place, so very different?'

With an acuity that astonished me, this woman asked me who I was. Dead souls just usually don't ask that question. They plunge right into their helpless preoccupations and obsessions. But she said, 'Who are you and what are you? I have never seen one like you before here. Only when I was alive.'

'I don't want to tell you yet,' I said. 'But I want to learn from you. Will you tell me why you seem happy? You are happy, aren't you?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I'm with those I love, and look below, look at all of it.'

'Then you harbor no questions about all of it?' I pushed, 'You don't long to know why you were born or why you suffered or what happened to you when you died or why you're here?'

To my further amazement, she laughed. Laughter I had never heard in Sheol. It was soft, soothing, merry laughter, sweet laughter, laughter like the laughter of angels, and I think I sang to her softly in response, rather naturally, and at this her soul exploded like a blossom, the way fleshly souls had exploded below when they they had learnt to love each other! She warmed to me and opened. 'You are beautiful,' she whispered respectfully.

'But why, why are all these others in this place so unhappy, and why are you few here filled with peace and joy? Yes, I know, I have looked below. And you are with those you love. But so are all these others.'

'We don't resent God anymore,' she said. 'Any of us here. We don't hate Him.'

'The others do?'

'It's not that they hate Him,' she said gently, being very careful with me, as if I were easy to bruise. 'It's that they can't forgive Him for all this... for the world, for what's happened, and for this state of Sheol in which we languish. But we can. We have forgiven Him. And all of us have done it for various reasons, but forgiveness of God, that we have attained. We accept that our lives have been wondrous experiences, and worth the pain and suffering, and we cherish now the joy we knew, and the moments of harmony, and we have forgiven Him for not ever explaining it all to us, for not justifying it, not punishing the bad or rewarding the good, or whatever else it is that all these souls, living and dead, expect of Him. We forgive Him. We don't know, but we suspect that maybe He knows a great secret about how all this pain could come to pass and still be good. And if He doesn't want to tell, well, He is God. But whatever, we forgive Him and we Love Him in our forgiveness, even though we know He may never care about any of us, any more than He cares for the pebbles on the beach below.'

I was speechless. I sat very still, letting these souls of their own volition gather around me. Then one very young soul, the soul of a child, said:

'It seemed a terrible thing at first that God would bring us into the world to be murdered as we were, all of us - for you see, we three here died in war - but we have forgiven Him, because we know that if He could make something as beautiful as Life and Death, then He must Understand.'

'You see,' said another soul to me. 'it comes to this. We would suffer it all again, if we had to. And we would try to be better to each other and more loving. But it was worth it.'

'Yes,' said another. 'It took me all my life on Earth to Forgive God for the world, but I did it before I died, and came to dwell here with these others. And look, if you try hard, you'll see that we have made this something of a garden. It's hard for us. We work only with our minds and wills and memories, and imaginations, but we are making a place where we can remember what was good. And we forgive Him and we love Him that He gave us this much.'

'Yes,' said another. 'that He gave us anything at all. We are grateful and full of love for Him. For surely out there in the darkness is a great Nothing, and we have seen so many below who were obsessed with Nothing and with Misery, and they never knew the joys that we knew or know now.'

'This isn't easy,' said another soul. 'It's been a great struggle. But to make love was good, and to drink was good, and to dance and sing was beautiful, and to run drunk through the rain was joyous; and beyond there lies a chaos, an absence, and I am grateful that my eyes opened upon the world below and that I can remember it and see it from here.'

I thought for a long time without answering any of them, and they continued to talk to me, drawn to me, as if the light in me, if there was any visible light, was attracting them. Lucifer found us, and he too began to listen, sharing my amazement. In fact, the more we responded to their questions, the more they opened and seemed to understand their own answers more meaningfully, the denser and more intense the declarations became.

We soon saw these people had come from all nations and all walks of life. And though kinship bound many of them tightly together, that was not true with them all. In fact, many had lost sight of their dead kin entirely in other realms of Sheol. Others had never even laid eyes on them. While some had been greeted at the moment of death by their lost ones! And these were people of the world and all its beliefs gathered here in this place where light was beginning to shine forth.

'Your lives on earth, was there one common thread?' I asked finally. They couldn't answer. They really didn't know. They had not questioned each other about their lives, and as I asked them quick, random questions, it became clear that there had been no thread! Some of these people had been very rich, others poor, some had suffered unspeakably, some had suffered nothing but had known a golden prosperity and leisure in which they had grown to love Creation before they were even dead.