It’s always dangerous when I’m between book reviews. Sometimes my thoughts coagulate, like milk in the sunshine, and in desperation I record those curds on this blog.

The problem with me (well, one of many problems) is that, like many writers, I think I’m smarter than I am. People actually read what I write, which tends to give a guy a big head, even at my low level of readership.

My thoughts today conducted me on a strange road from colonial America to the Infernal Regions. I am not at all sure that any part of that road is worth sharing. Might even do more harm than good.

But let’s see how it goes.

In my reading, I came upon a reference to the Konkapot River in Massachusetts.

This reminded me of a poem I read as a boy. I later learned that it was an epitaph written by no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln, for a Kickapoo Indian friend:

Here lies poor Johnny Kongapod;
Have mercy on him, gracious God,
As he would do if he was God 
And you were Johnny Kongapod.

I had also read references to a Native American named John Konkapot, whom I had assumed to be the man the poem was written for. But that isn’t so. The Konkapot River is named after that original John Konkapot, a Mohican of the Stockbridge tribe who converted to Christianity and was highly esteemed by the white community. The picture at the top of this post is a study by Norman Rockwell, never completed, in which John Konkapot talks with the missionary Rev. John Sargent. Sargent’s wife, who mistrusted the Native Americans, peeks around the corner in concern.

But Lincoln’s Johnny Kongapod was a different person, perhaps named after the original guy.

But that’s just the preliminaries. My actual concern tonight is Lincoln’s poem. One remembers (I reviewed a book on the subject) that Lincoln was an atheist and a free-thinker for much of his life. He had been raised in a hyper-Calvinist Baptist denomination, where they taught that most people were hopelessly damned from birth. Such a teaching did not appeal to his essentially humane, ironical cast of mind.

Why would God send Johnny Kongapod to Hell, Lincoln asks. Johnny wouldn’t do that to Him.

I could write all night on that subject. The main answer, of course, is that God is God. He knows more than Johnny Kongapod. Or Lincoln, even.

And my main response personally has always been, “Heaven is the place where we’re filled with joy in beholding the Lord face to face. If you don’t like the Lord, why would you want to go there?”

It’s conceivable that Heaven and Hell are the same place. But the Beatific Vision that makes it wonderful for God’s children makes it unbearable for those who have eyes but will not see.

And lately I’ve been contemplating the Old Testament Sheol, which is Chaos, the primordial sea over which the Spirit of God hovers at creation. Perhaps Hell isn’t fire, but water. But I’m not sure about that, and don’t know whether it heads anywhere worthwhile.