Heaven--What Do People Expect? : Survey: Cleric’s book gets reactions from a wide variety of individuals, from the famous to the unknown, as to what they believe awaits them in the hereafter.

What will heaven be like?

Everyone knows the question has been pondered endlessly. Everybody has some idea of what it will be like. But the Rev. Michael Seed, the ecumenical adviser to British Cardinal Basil Hume, decided to ask a wide variety of people--including children, royalty, actors, writers, artists, pop stars, politicians, and even some religious leaders--to go public with their notions about the hereafter.

In addition to querying contemporaries, Seed assembled passages from books and Scriptures of the great faiths. The result is a book titled “I Will See You In Heaven, where animals don’t bite . . .” published by St. Paul Publications in England. Arrangements are being made for publication of the book in the United States at a later date.

Seed, 33, has an ecumenical background. He was raised in Salvationist, Baptist, evangelical and Anglican traditions, became a Catholic in 1974 and in 1978 joined the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, whose main mission is Christian unity.

Some of the autographed letters he received from contributors will be auctioned off by Christie’s on Dec. 11 in Westminster Cathedral Hall. All proceeds will go to the cathedral’s night shelter for the homeless.

What will heaven be like?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta writes in the preface that “heaven for me will be the joy of being with Jesus and Mary and all the other saints and angels, and all our poor--all of us going home to God.”

Sir John M. Templeton, the Presbyterian philanthropist who created the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, says that “each of us can create here and now our own heaven or hell.”

Actor Dudley Moore acknowledges that “as I don’t believe in God, it is hard for me to believe in heaven . . . except as we know it on this Earth!”

Gen. Eva Burrows, international leader of the Salvation Army, writes that “to the Salvationist, heaven is a gloriously happy place, because a Salvationist does not die, he is ‘promoted to glory.’ ”

The Rev. Michael Taylor, director of Britain’s Christian Aid relief agency, writes that “we must work for heaven to come on Earth or we cannot expect it to come at all. The poor ask of us and give to us nothing less than this hope, and neither does God.”

A 10-year-old girl named Lorraine writes that “heaven will be happy, no guns, no Gulf crisis,” while 15-year-old Megan comments that “heaven is whatever you want it to be. Nothing is pretence, the real thing isn’t hidden by glamour.”

Canon Christopher Hill of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London writes that “on being asked my views on heaven I cannot but call to mind the definition made well over a century ago by that famous canon of St. Paul’s, Sydney Smith. He said, ‘My idea of heaven is eating pates de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.’ ”

Hill adds that “if this sounds rather crazy I think a little reflection shows it to be not quite so absurd after all. The biblical picture of heaven is the great banquet, the feast in which all the saints share and of which the earthly Eucharist is a foretaste. Furthermore, the sound of the trumpet has always been associated with judgment and the final destiny of man. Perhaps my addition to Sydney Smith would be to the effect that the trumpets one might hear would be the splendid brass of the Verdi Requiem!”

Julian Filochowski, director of the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, writes that “when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, when Nelson Mandela was freed from his incarceration, dreams came true, the innermost yearnings were realized, and we glimpsed a tiny fragment of heaven.”

He adds that “I feel I’ve come closest to heaven when I’ve met people, some of the poorest of the poor, who are struggling for justice against enormous odds, but holding tenaciously to their dream and gradually and precariously turning it into a reality. It’s the grace of God in life. It’s heaven on earth for me.”

The Rev. Emilio Castro, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, notes that “attempts to define the heaven, hell or doomsday exactly have failed since the early church. That’s why all we need to know of heaven might be expressed by the Pauline words which refer to the hidden wisdom of God: ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God’ (I Corinthians 2:9-10).”

Anglican Archbishop George Carey of Canterbury quotes from a 1966 book by J.A. Motyer to give his thoughts on heaven. The passage he cites reads, in part: “When a Christian dies all the uncertainties and dangers lie behind: the uncertainties and dangers whether of camp life or of temporary stay in a foreign port. All the certainties and safeties lie ahead in the presence of Christ.”

From a book by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith comes this definition: “Heaven is in itself eschatological reality. It is the advent of the finally and wholly Other. Its own definitiveness stems from the definitiveness of God’s irrevocable and indivisible love. Its openness vis-a-vis the total eschaton derives from the open history of Christ’s body, and therewith of all creation which is still under construction.”

But M.P. David Alton, parliamentary sponsor of the Movement for Christian Democracy, says that “by definition our vocabulary is inadequate to describe the peace and bliss of heaven.”

For 8-year-old Denzil, one of several youngsters overheard discussing the issue, the vocabulary was more than adequate. “It’s a place where animals don’t bite!”