O taste and see.
                                         —Psalm38:8

I was driving through the fields of Heaven when I realized I was still on Earth,
because Earth was all I had ever known of Heaven and no other place would do
for living forever. I had grown beyond belief from seeing that everything I felt
had sprung from lives I’d already lived, so that I could feel the way I did, which
was so much I had no idea where to begin. The crawling? The slithering? The
leaping? The flying? The dying? If you had been there with me in the passenger
seat and asked me about the newt or flea or pachyderm, I would have told you
everything I knew, which was a frightening amount, and not only that, but just
how much I loved them all—those Heavenly beings: the serpent, the lion, the
mosquito, the hawk, the antelope, the worm: and not only beings, but stones as
well. Each particular thing so mysterious in my unknowing. I knew I was living
forever. I knew the fields through which I was driving were the fields of Heaven
in which I was tasting and seeing, seeing and tasting.