Sunsets, sex, and spinach (or, What heaven is really like)

Those of us that imagine heaven see it not only as a place, but an event that returns us to perpetual youth, a happy healthy time, perhaps our 20s or 30s, when we had healthy smiling children that ran to greet us, and happy healthy parents still vital and active, and happy healthy grandparents still plump an ageless and cuddling their grandchildren.

And so I envision a place where I will ever see my children as children, my parents as parents, my grandparents as grandparents, and I suspect they will see others in much the same way I see them.

Since no one (I know) has returned from heaven to describe what it's like, I'm very happy to imagine it this way.

And since we know there is no reason in physics why time should move forward rather than backward, and string theory allows for an infinite number of time lines - in which we are rich, poor, happy, sad, never born, or forever young - there is no reason why there can't be place like the one I imagine, called heaven or not, in this universe or another.

No reason at all.

[2013-06-04]

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My Grandma Grandy (Mom's mom) suffered from debilitating arthritis. She was for the last few years of her life forced to use a wheelchair to get around (which she abhorred) and spent a lot time in bed when home.

Grandma ran everywhere when she was a little girl. Mom said when Grandma died, she pictured her in heaven running again.

[2013-06-04]

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I know that perceptions of the afterlife vary by culture and time and many other things. How could it be otherwise? Having a persistent universal understanding of heaven is no more possible than having one of sunsets, sex, or spinach.

[2013-06-04]

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"As goes the church, so goes society. What you think is old fogy in the church... is the church trying to preserve sanity in a world that's lost its mind."
--Mike Cumbie, Southern Baptist/Catholic and evangelist

[2013-06-03]

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God bless William Peter Blatty

Click to enlarge: Detail from the movie poster for The Exorcist.

William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, has petitioned Cardinal Donald Wuerl to remove the Catholic status of Georgetown University for not adhering to church doctrine, particularly on abortion.[1]

An Early Story >
The Georgetowner >
Catholic Education Daily >
 
Prior to this, I'd encountered other examples of Blatty's work and come to view him as he views himself - a devout Christian who's work reflects a sincere faith. (More on that another time.)

My 2¢: True "Christian novelists" are Christian novelists because their faith is inherent in their nature and craft. Someone who sets out to be a "distinctively Christian" anything is missing the point entirely.

If you want to see real faith on paper, read The Exorcist, or better yet, listen to Blatty read it. If that's not your cup of tea, try Dimiter, which Blatty said at the time was his most personally important work. No spinning heads or pea soup.

[2013-06-01]

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I wanted to embed a video of Raymond Arroyo's interview with Blatty on EWTN's World Over on June 6, 2013, but it's currently unavailable on Youtube.

You can listen to the audio here >
Or you can go here >

If it doesn't appear as the currently available video, look for it in the scrolling menu at bottom. Blatty is about 23:30 minutes in.

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[1]
I don't know much about such things, but the petition uses Canon Law, which is not US law but church law. Catholic institutions are bound by Canon Law just as you and I are bound by civil law.

I imagine the financial cost would be enormous, but IMHO, if you don't like the club's rules, you're in the wrong club.

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Preggers with a baker's dozen.

Click to enlarge: (Top to bottom) A box cover from Mighty Fine Donuts at 2612 Parade St, in Erie, PA, a map of where you can find Mighty Fine Donuts, and a shot of the store from the street. Map >

Bruggerman's Mighty Fine Donuts is at 2612 Parade St, in Erie, PA.

I went to school with Kurt Bruggerman at Bethel Christian School in Erie when it was at 737 E 26th Street. He was a year ahead of me and probably doesn't remember me. His family ran Bruggerman's Mighty Fine Donuts.

He would occasionally bring a box of donuts to school, and from what it looked like to me, he'd cranked up the donut filling injector to maximum so each custard Long John looked preggers with a baker's dozen.[1]

(I have no idea how you get custard into a Long John; that's my 8th grade imagination talking.)

Kurt worked very hard, he was among the hardest working teens I ever met. (Jimmy Amendola was another; Jimmy had four paper routes and later worked for Super Duper, a grocery super center, off West 26th IIRC.)

Bethel English teacher Mrs Blystone (then Miss Emerson) frequently called him "Kurtis" and played on the word "courteous" in fun. Kurt would smile almost demurely, bat his eyes and hang his head.

I stopped into Mighty Fine Donuts a few years ago when I was home, but Kurt wasn't there that day. He runs the place now and doesn't have to get up to make the donuts anymore.

Good for him.

[2013-06-03]

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[1]
"Preggers" is an old term from the 1950's. I don't know how much currency it had. Holly Golightly uses it in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I played with a number of metaphors here over a couple days. The obvious route would have been to find a counterweight to Long John, eg, "Little John" or "Short John," but nothing seemed to work well that way so I ended up using new baking-related vocabulary that had some element of "large" or "many." Serviceable.

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A journey with a beginning and end punctuated by indelible consequences.

Popular culture has filled us with images of folks resigned to death or welcoming it, like this one:


Crazies atop a Skyscraper Get Blown to Kingdom Come in "Independence Day"

That's the reaction of an increasingly secular society.

Unfortunately, those at peace with death are seen as whacko unless they are resigned in some noble New Age way to embracing their place in the cycle of life (which is fertilizer).

Should anyone open that cycle into a line and regard it as a journey with a beginning and end punctuated by indelible consequences, they're considered as crazy as the alien cannon fodder atop the US Bank Tower in LA.

[2013-03-11]

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Say something else in that ear.

"If plants could write we might have a different definition of 'invasive species.'"
--Clarence 0ddbody

[2013-06-03]

 

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Added to my list of things kids don't do anymore: Stay up late to watch TV

When we were kids, we stayed up late to watch Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments every Easter. It was typically broadcast on Sunday night and started at 7pm. Since we went to church every Sunday night, and church ended at 7pm, we often missed the first half hour. No matter, with commercials it ran 4 hours, and we always fell asleep before it ended.

As an adult I realized why, after all these years, it continues to be a perennial favorite: it appeals equally to Jews and Christians who share sacred scriptures and a hope in a deliverer.

(And it doesn't hurt to have a handsome lead in Charlton Heston and some sexy Egyptians and sweaty slaves.)

We stayed up late to watch other things in those days, too, because there were no VCRs, Tivos, or Internet. If you didn't watch the broadcast, you didn't see it.

Things we stayed up for:

1. The Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack.

2. The Late Great Horror Show. This was local and hosted by Jim Cook, a DJ with AM rock 'n roll station WJET in Erie. Jim Cook went on to be a VP of Clear Channel Radio.

Around the same time, Cleveland's Channel 8 (now a FOX affiliate, there was no FOX in those days) had an oddball duo that hosted late night movies; one was very tall and the other very small. If the atmosphere cooperated and we didn't mind a little snow, we could sometimes tune them in.

Yes, boys and girls, with an antenna. There's one inside your cell phone, too. It talks to satellites.

I pass Cleveland's FOX8 on my way home to Erie, PA. As a boy on I-90 through Cleveland, I always pictures that tall guy and short guy taping segments inside that building somewhere. Sort of like I was nearing then passing Hollywood royalty.

3. Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon

4. Any Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie.

5. Any horror movie with Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, or scantily clad girls being chased by monsters.

[2013-05-04]

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