I always post “The Mansions of the Lord” on Memorial Day, because no other song I know expresses it like that one does. It doesn’t work theologically, but even I have to just go with my heart sometimes.
As I wrote in The Year of the Warrior, playing fast and loose with theology in my own right:
“It’s strange to die this way, and me a Christian. If I were heathen yet, I’d know that Odin would welcome me to Valhalla. What welcome has Christ for a warrior, Father?”
I had no quick answer, and Moling must have seen my trouble, because he asked what the boy had said. I told him.
“Tell him I’ve had a dream about Heaven,” said Moling. “The teachers tell us that the Beloved lives outside Time itself. He goes back and forth in it when He wills. And when we go to be with Him, we too will be outside Time.
“It seemed to me in my dream that at the last day the Beloved called together all the great warriors who had been brave and merciful, and who had trusted in His mercy, and He mustered them into a mighty army, and He said to them, ‘Go forth for Me now, My bonny fighters, and range through Time, and wherever there is cruelty and wickedness that makes the weak to suffer, and faithful to doubt My goodness, wherever the children are slain or violated, wherever the women are raped or beaten, wherever the old are threatened and robbed, then take your shining swords and fight that cruelty and wickedness, and protect my poor and weak ones, and do not lay down your weapons or take your rest until all such evil is crushed and defeated, and the right stands victorious in every place and every time. We will not empty Hell even with this, for men love Hell, but I made a sweet song at the beginning, My sons, and though men have sung it foul we will make it sweet again forever.’”
I said these words to Halvard in Norse, and he died smiling.
