Dante's+project

** My Walking Tour of Heaven ** The night after I finished reading Dante’s __Inferno__ by Dante Alighieri, I went to sleep and had a dream that felt so real. I dreamt I was going through heaven with my great-grandma as my guide. It was really weird to me because I felt like she was waking me up and telling me to take her hand. The next thing I knew we were in front of the golden gates of heaven. Heaven is huge, there are many angels, and the sky is always blue. Everyone is always smiling and having a good time and playing games and eating great food. Great-grandma Johnson took me through three circles of heaven: Leadership, Charity and Forgiveness. The first circle my great-grandma took me to was the Leadership circle where I met Harriet Tubman. When we went into the circle, Harriet Tubman was there sitting on a bench. The way she sat made me think that she knew I was coming to talk to her about something. My great-grandma led me to her and we sat down. Harriet Tubman described what it was like when she was growing up and all the chores she had to do. She worked as a house servant when she was about five or six years old. Seven years later, she was sent to labor in the fields with the adults. Ms. Tubman said that she and several slaves were about to be sold, so she decided to run away and follow the North Star by night. Before the day ended, she found a friendly white woman who helped her evade the people looking for her. She reached freedom and stayed there for a year prior to coming back to get the rest of her family and some other slaves. She did this nineteen times and it became known as the “Underground Railroad.” She risked her life repeatedly to save others, even when there was a $40,000 reward posted for her capture. Ms. Tubman’s reward in heaven is being a guardian angel that guides new spirits through their journey into heaven. She meets them at the golden gates and shows them the way to their new home in paradise. The second circle that my great-grandma and I visited was Charity. In that circle, I met Mr. Dale Harwick. Mr. Harwick was one of the nicest and most generous men I have ever met here on earth. When I saw him again in heaven, the first thing he did was come over to me, greet me with a “Hi Sweetheart” and give me a big hug. After he greeted me, we went to find a seat and talk about what happened in his life. He told me that when he was younger his family was so poor he had to work on their house because they could not afford to pay for repairs. He learned how to fix things so his family could continue to live in their home. The house required so many repairs that he practically rebuilt it. Later in his life, he co-owned a mechanic shop. He got a job in construction, but while working on the job he was injured. Afterwards, he moved to Virginia and began to fix and rebuild his friends’ cars for free. He was a father figure for every kid in the neighborhood and offered guidance and advice to them. Mr. Dale Harwick’s reward in heaven was a new body just like he had when he was younger and before the accident. He can now run and play with the other angels in heaven, continue to help others, all while being pain free and not self-conscious of his poor physique. The third circle my great-grandma and I went to was Forgiveness. In that circle, I met Martin Luther King, Jr. When I went into the circle, I saw him writing on something, but when he saw us, he stopped and got up and shook our hands. Instead of sitting down to talk about what happened in his life, we chose to walk just as he had done with his peaceful march on Washington, D.C. He spoke of his brutal assassination and how just like Jesus taught us; he holds no malice against James Earl Ray. He also spoke of his many arrests even though he was peaceably demonstrating to correct several moral wrongs in our society. Mr. King’s reward is the realization of his dream. Everyone in heaven is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. He also leads a Sunday service attended by all different kinds of people. When he invited us to attend one of his services, it was on Forgiveness just like the name of the circle. He ended with the same words he used at the end of his **//I Have a Dream//** speech, “… when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”   I wasn’t really surprised that my great-grandma Johnson was in heaven but what surprised me was that there are three different circles in heaven. I loved the idea that my great-grandma was my guide because I really didn’t get to see her as much as I would have liked when I was younger. When I did see her, we were really close. My great-grandma is someone virtuous because she was always so nice to people even if they weren’t nice back. I admire her because she was a determined woman who never gave up. I have learned many things walking around heaven, meeting these people, learning about them and knowing what they were like and how they lived when they were alive. I also learned some interesting facts about them in the process, like Harriet Tubman had a 40,000-dollar reward for her capture, that Mr. Dale Harwick rebuilt his family home when he was younger, and that Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested more than once for standing up for things he believed in. I was happy I went to heaven because I just learned about Hell in class; I got to see my great-grandma again and learn what heaven was like and get a closer look at it. Leadership is a minor act compared to Charity and Forgiveness because you can lead all you want but if you don’t have forgiveness then I don’t see how you can go far in life. Charity and Forgiveness are a major acts because you have to forgive people in life before you can move on from it and it will hold you back if you don’t. With charity, you help people, it makes you feel good inside when you do it, and I was taught at a young age that it was a good thing to do for other people. The next thing I knew was my sister and brother were trying to get me up from the best dream of my life, but I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to go away from my great-grandma, Harriet Tubman, Mr. Dale Harwick, and Martin Luther King, Jr. and most important, I didn’t want to leave Heaven. When I finally woke up, my sister and brother were at the end of my bed and I was so angry at them for waking me up. I might need to go back to the third circle to learn more on forgiveness.
 * This piece of writing is like a roller coaster because I had a very slow start kind of like when you first star off on a roller coaster. Then after I got to working on my project everything just started to take of like after you get up that big hill then everything goes smoothly and takes off. Even though I had a few obstacles in my way I just got through them like when the roller coaster has the hoops that you go on I had them when writing this paper. **