A Heavenletter™ I read over today made me think of a book I just finished reading. The book is My Antonia by Willa Cather.

I read over at least three specific Heavenletters a day in the conducting of Heaven business. First I read over the Heavenletter that comes out today. Then I read over one written about two months ago which will be published in about two weeks. I read it over to catch typos and details like that. And then I listen to what God says today, and a new Heavenletter is born.

So we have three different Heavenletters and varied dates that I’m looking at on seven days a week.  Nevertheless, I did figure out which Heavenletter motivated this blog entry I’m writing. It’s #3327, The Richness of Love, the Heavenletter that came out on Sunday, January 3, 2010, the day I’m writing this.

Well, we certainly do know that the richness of love does not lie in our possessions and positively not in our attachment to them.

In this really wonderful American classic, My Antonia, there is rather an awful elderly married couple who play a minor part in the book. The husband is an incredible skinflint with no shame. For example, he will offer a boy a small tip to hold his horse for him and then come back, take the reins from the boy, ride off on his horse and say: “Sorry, kid, I’ll take care of you next time.” And this guy feels quite good about how he enriches his life — with money, that is.

His wife isn’t a prize, yet she sure beats him. It is a wonder they stay together until you realize that their only sport in life seems to be in hating each other and trying to see who can outsmart the other. If you are the one who gets the other angrier than he gets you, then you have outsmarted the other. Heaven help us!

The only thing the husband hates as much or more than his wife is her family.

In the olden days when the story takes place — in the Midwest incidentally –  a law has just been passed that, when a husband precedes his wife in death, later, upon her own death, a third of the money now in her possession goes to her family, her husband’s in-laws — in this case, to the family her husband cannot tolerate.

You can imagine how the idea of his wife’s family getting their hands on any of his prized money burns a hole in the husband’s gut.He would do anything to prevent his wife’s family from inheriting a dollar of his money. I might as well add that he doesn’t at all like the idea of dying before his wife either.

In glee, the husband solves his difficulty. In glee!

He shoots his wife dead an hour before he shoots himself dead, having signed a declaration of this so his wife’s family will never see a bit of his money, and so, in death, with a smile on his face, he gets the better of his wife, and has the say about his useless money after his death. Well, he died happy!

So, dear friends, stay away from attachment to possessions.