What is heaven? Truly? I ask myself this a lot and play the song by Tim Hughes ‘I Can Only Imagine' (at least his version) on my iPod countless time and it never fails to move me.

Sometimes, I just imagine meeting Jesus and not being able to even look at him, such is my awe of who He is and what He represents. In my sinful, messy, undefined life here on earth, I just would kneel at His feet and ask Him to hold me. Forever.

I wrote last week that hell is largely absence from God, from Him being able to listen, hear, intervene, carry, love. But heaven has to be way more than just the opposite of this. I am guessing when I write this, but I imagine that stillness will be at the heart of the new heaven that we will enter when we leave this world. Total stillness. Absence from any want, pain, hurt, anxiety, tension, worry, doubt, fear, sickness.

I worry less than I have ever done in my life and finally feel that I have managed to capture my thought life and allowed the stillness of God to bathe me in His peace. But I do still worry. I worry about what my friends think of me. What they say about me when I am not there with them in the room. What my work colleagues think of my performance at work. Whether I have done the right thing by someone. How to become a better person and not make the mistakes that I made in 2005. How to pray when I know that I have hurt God. How to love. How to accept being loved. How to accept me for who I am, rather than being someone else. As humans, we are a conveyor belt of emotions and often can't stop, get off the ride, just to smell the roses and pause for a moment. To be still. Silent. At peace.

Something my Mum got me into, which her church in Sheffield (St Toms) practises, is soaking. I think that they got it from the Toronto Airport Church. I love to soak. You lie on the floor, get comfortable with a pillow, and just listen to the CD (usually spoken Psalms and other Bible verses along with prayers, set to music) and ‘soak'. Usually for around 30-45 minutes. Not praying, not doing, just listening, being still, and allowing the Holy Spirit to bathe you in His presence. And it's amazing because you come out of it refreshed. Renewed. But it's a discipline in many ways. To be still. To allow your mind to shut down and not to have the thoughts, worries, tensions of the day to crowd you out and occupy your thought life. The first few times I did it, I could not get past the first two songs before wanting to get up and ‘do something'. Even now, the first song can be a struggle. But you quickly settle and then things begin to happen. It reinforces your love for Jesus and your sense of security because when you are still, you feel truly alive. As God intended us to be when he created Adam and then Eve. Free to do His works. Unburdened by the world, but having the knowledge that He loves us and wants us to do what we were born for.

I sometimes feel like I am in heaven in a small way through silly comfort things, things that I wrote (last week) would be missing from hell. Snuggling up under a warm duvet when the world outside rages through violent wind, rain or hail; smelling fresh coffee and drinking ice cold spring water; hearing the laughter from a newborn baby; the smell of newly cut grass; the gentle softness of touch, the generating of warmth and affection from a close friend, a kindly smile on a hard day when the world seems so harsh; a hug from a friend that brings you back in from the cold; holding hands with someone special; loving someone and being loved back.

Heaven is also touched in passing through art, writing, photography; community; a fellow recognition of a shared humanity; forgiveness; but mostly, I feel heaven through the sound of silence; it's why I am heading off to a silent retreat this summer for a week. Six nights and seven days of sleeping, praying, eating, reading, being. Waking whenever you want to wake, sleeping whenever you want to sleep, alone but with God. It's going to be a test and I will probably come home and want to chat non-stop for the first day or two but a week of being still, with no email, phone or other communication tool, it will be a chance to be still and have silence.

But heaven is only touched upon in passing, the very outer hem of a heavenly cloud glimpsed in passing. We can never truly penetrate its inner workings until we come to the point of meeting Jesus for the first time in heaven. I can only imagine what that will be like.

To have pure stillness.

To rest.

I want that more than anything and yet only lately have I felt that I have got anywhere near that. But as a child, I knew that I was still. Totally loved. Free. Able to have fun without any worries. Exploring the Peak District with my mates and climbing trees, messing around with mud, water, sand. Parties. Games. It was a time of infinite joy and very little anxiety. It's why I relate so much to something that Graham Greene once wrote, that all experiences come from the first sixteen years and that most writers have very little experiences post-sixteen that shape their writing in some major way.

I feel that for a lot of people, they spend the rest of their lives trying to get back to that place of childhood, wanting to be free again, to live joyfully. It's why so many people relate to the Peter Pan syndrome, because they know that in childhood, something special, something real, is there. Children rarely lie at an early age and even if they do, they certainly never hide their true feelings. They tell you the truth, of what they feel and why. They cut through a lot of the adult bull that is there to protect, shield, fend off. Innocent but aware of the world.

I don't want to go back to being a child but I would love to be free again, as I was when I was seven, eight, ten, twelve. And then I realise that I will be. When I meet Jesus in heaven. I actually imagine meeting Jesus for the first time in heaven will be a little like soaking. You are nervous perhaps at the beginning. Worried because you know what you have done wrong in your life. You just want to be still. Settle. To be told that it's going to be okay. That you don't need to strive anymore. Or worry about others. That you can just rest in the moment. And then Jesus appears and envelops you in His arms and everything that is in you, that has come from the Fall, is immediately dissipated and you just weep with joy.

I can only imagine what it's going to be like, when I come home, finally.