TOPEKA, KANSAS -
A physician who believes UFO's carry angels...should be awarded damages because the state suspended his medical license for nearly three years, his lawyer argues.
Dr. Stephen S. Corder may have "somewhat complicated" beliefs, lawyer Alan V. Johnson told the Kansas Supreme Court.
But those beliefs were no reason for the state Board of Healing Arts to suspend his license in March 1989 pending the outcome of a psychiatric examination, Johnson said Tuesday.
Corder believes that unidentified flying objects are real and the beings inside them are angels from God, Johnson told the justices...
Court records say Corder believes beings on UFOs communicated with him while he slept by planting thoughts in his brain.
Associated Press
26 May 1994
Saint Teresa
Thomas a Kempis
(Of The) Imitation Of Christ
Third Book: On Inward Consolation
c1400
Translation: William Benham
Heaven doesn't get any respect...
...In grade school I always fell asleep when the nuns began to talk about heaven. No self-respecting kid wanted to spend time on a cloud, listening to harps, singing praises to the Most High. This is not a 10-year-old's idea of a good time.
In high school I fell asleep when the religion teacher tried to convey the beatific vision. I had visions of my own to contemplate.
In college I read Dante's Inferno and a little bit of the Purgatorio. Gustave Dore's pictures of sinners with their heads stuck in steaming sulfur were great fun, but not even his drawings of Beatrice could keep me awake during the reading of the Paradiso. Yawn...
...What is it about Heaven that makes it such a yawner?
ANSWER ONE: the Western concept of God. I grew up with a God who was All-Perfect, All-Powerful, All-Pro...
Now, of course, my image of God is quite a bit different. With the help of the Hebrew Bible and a Jew named Jesus, I discovered a romping stomping bundle of divinity I could relate to. This God has emotions: passion, anger, hurt, compassion, frustration, loyalty, and love...I feel equally comfortable hollering at - or hugging - this God.
ANSWER TWO: Western Christians have replaced the Hebrew idea of the resurrection of the body with the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. Now the immortality of the soul, for all its comfort as an idea, is boring...
Forget it. I'll take the resurrection of the body any day, which allows for a heaven full of wedding parties (Jesus' personal image of heaven) and of other earthly delights: eating grapes, sniffing fresh-ground coffee, long after-dinner conversations, running rapids, petting a long-haired cat, and, oh yes, making love on breezy summer nights. This is heaven, after all.
ANSWER THREE: the people of heaven are boring...heaven is full of nerds; hell is full of cool kids...
ANSWER FOUR: lack of a prayer life. My inability to grasp a feeling for heaven had much to do with never connecting with God in the first place...
...It is hard for me to imagine now that heaven could be any less amazing than what we have experienced on earth already. So I'm expecting lots more than harps...
Heaven is a simple proposition, really. It is the place where God lives. It is up there, out there, away from us. The task of religion - and this is what the word means - is to bind together heaven and earth, to reconnect oursleves to the missing part. We were cast out of paradise, and the longing is to go back home...No one alive knows what heaven is really like. All we know is that we have the desire, like E.T., to phone home.
Kenneth Guentert
U.S. CATHOLIC
November, 1988
On the assumption that you are a working woman who has led a good life, I am going to answer your questions as to what our heaven will be like.
WILL I STILL HAVE A JOB? In heaven there is full employment for all who want it. St. Peter asks you when you get there, Do you want a job? Some people say, Yes, I like to work. They get to pick out their jobs. Some women say, I have always wanted to operate a crane, and - whammo! - a crane appears and they instantly go to work. Some men say, I have always wanted to watch soap operas all day long, and they get to do just that, but St. Peter asks them to mind some of the children and do the laundry and make dinner. (Incidentally, there are no food processors in heaven. Everything is made from scratch because St. Peter thinks it's healthier.
ARE THERE OFFICES IN HEAVEN LIKE THE ONES HERE? There are offices, but no cubicles and no partitions. Every office has four walls and a door and a window, and a sofa for naps. By decree, every office gets the same kind of chair. It has arms and a nice upholstered seat, and it swivels and tilts. There is no such thing as a "secretary chair" or a "visitors chair" or - heaven forbade - an "executive chair." The throne of God has a little gold trim on it, but it's basically the same ergonomic chair you will be issued if you choose an office job.
DO THEY HAVE MONEY IN HEAVEN? Yes, but it's different. All the money from discarded Monopoly games goes directly to heaven, and that's what they use. When you arrive at the gates you have nothing, no matter what you had on earth. St. Peter gives you the basic disbursement, the same as everybody gets: two $20 bills, one $10 bill, five singles and two little green plastic houses.
You can trade this money with others if you like, or you can just hang on to it if that's your style. Since all your needs are taken care of, the money's worthless in earthly terms. The only reason they give it to you at all is that they discovered it helps ease the transistion. People got very twitchy and anxious in their first few months in heaven if they didn't have some paper with numbers printed on it, so this system was installed.
St. Peter does get angry if anybody tries to do deals with the Monopoly money. Any form of leveraged buy-out, hostile takeover or paper transaction not based on the actual Monopoly money in your possession is grounds for immediate demotion to you-know-where.
A less serious offense, but one guaranteed to send you to purgatory, is lending or borrowing with interest.
WILL I MEET MY BOSS IN HEAVEN SOMEDAY? That's entirely up to you. The questionnaire you fill out while outside the gates specifically asks: "Are there any people you never want to see again?" That is your opportunity, if you choose to take it, to name names. St. Peter has a fantastic memory, and he sees to it that people with "personality conflicts" are kept in seperate sections of heaven.
Interviewed about this policy, St. Peter explained, "These are ®MDUL¯people®MDNM¯ we're taking in here, not saints. We aim to keep it a pleasant place. Otherwise, why bother to have a heaven?"
IS THERE DAY CARE IN HEAVEN? As explained above, some children are cared for by men (and women) who prefer not to hold other jobs. In addition, nobody of any age is kept away from the workplace. So an office might have a baby in a crib being watched by somebody who elects baby watching as his or her job, and right next door there might be an office with an 85-year-old who likes to work, whose office adjoins that of a teenager.
Basically, child care is a nonissue in heaven. St. Peter likes to see all kinds of people doing whatever they choose, no matter what age or sex or color they are, and he is perpetually puzzled that we haven't figured out how to do this on earth.
HAVE ELECTRONIC INVENTIONS COME TO HEAVEN? No, they don't want them. There are no photocopiers, computers or car phones (or cars, for that matter). There are two reasons for this:
One is that when you get to heaven, you reclaim your memory. On earth you had to spend a lot of time looking things up on Rolodexes, in dictionaries, on floppy or hard disks. On earth, there were days when you couldn't remember your best friend's phone number, or why you had left one room to go to another. The minute you get to heaven, your memory for what's really important returns.
Secondly, in heaven the number of things that are important dramatically decreases. There are no stock-market quotes, no train crashes, no strikes, no weather (but good weather), no gossip. All you have to pay attention to is the need to be kind. And nobody's in any hurry, either. If you want to say something kind to somebody, you just wait for the opportunity; you don't need to fax it.
WHAT IF I WAS A LAWYER OR AN INVESTMENT BANKER ON EARTH? You would have to give it up.
WILL I MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE? Yes. Eleanor Roosevelt is there, to mention just one. She has an office and a chair and always leaves her door open. But I don't dare tell you who won't be there, for fear I won't get in myself.
Kathleen Fury
WORKING WOMAN
April 1989
He who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all his friends:
Faithful friends! It lies, I know
Pale and white and cold as snow;
And ye say, "Abdallah's dead"!
Weeping at the feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this:
"I am not the thing you kiss;
Cease your tears and let it lie;
It was mine - it is not I."
Sweet Friends! What the women lave
For its last bed in the grave,
Is a tent which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,
Is a cage, from which at last,
Like a hawk, my soul hath passed.
Love the inmate, not the room -
The wearer, not the garb; - the plume
Of the falcon, not the bars
That kept him from these splendid stars!
........
Allah glorious! Allah good!
Now thy world is understood;
Now the long, long wonder ends!
Yet ye weep, my erring friends,
While the man whom ye call dead,
In unspoken bliss, instead,
Lives and loves you; lost, 'tis true,
By such light as shines for you;
But in light you cannot see
Of unfulfilled felicity, -
In enlarging paradise,
Lives a life that never dies.
Farewell, friends, yet not farewell; -
Where I am ye too shall dwell.
I am gone before your face,
A moment's time, a little space.
When ye come where I have stepped,
Ye will wonder why ye wept;
Ye will know by wise love taught,
That here is all and there is naught.
Weep a while, if ye are fain, -
Sunshine still must follow rain;
Only not at death, - for death,
Now I know, is that first breath
Which our souls draw when we enter
Life, which is of all life center.
Be ye certain all seems love,
Viewed from Allah's throne above;
Be ye stout of heart and come,
Bravely onward to your home!
La Allah illa Allah! yea!
Thou love divine, thou love alway!
Edwin Arnold
"Nagel"
Nagel's Gallery BBS
Portland, Oregon
In October 1922 a reporter asked Houdini an imprtant question: "Do you believe it is possible to talk to people who have died?"
Houdini thought for a moment. "My mind is open," he said. He wanted to believe it was possible, for he longed to get a message from his mother. But he had never seen proof that living people could talk with loved ones who had died...
Houdini visted many mediums, trying to find one who could get a message from his mother. He went to one medium who seemed honest. "I was willing to beleive, even wanted to believe," he said. "With a beating heart I waited, hoping that I might feel once more the presence of my beloved mother."
But he was disappointed. The medium passed on a message from Mother Weiss. Houdini noticed that the message was in English. Mrs. Weiss had not been able to speak or read the language. The day also happened to be his mother's birthday, but the "spirit" didn't mention that.
He sent (his wife) Bess to other seances. The results were just as false. She received messages from her dead children - the Houdinis never had children. She also received messages from her dead mother. Bess' mother was very much alive...
Mediums began watching for Houdini. If he came to a seance, they refused to go on with it. So Houdini went to one seance wearing a false beard and wig. As a trumpet floated in the dakness, he snapped on a powerful flashlight. There was the medium holding the trumpet to his lips.
Taking off his beard and wig, Houdini cried, "It is I, Houdini! I hereby accuse you of fraud and deception!"
...In September 1925, Houdini offered $10,000 to anyone who could produce a real spirit. But no one tried for the money...
On October 31, 1926 - Halloween - Houdini died...Two days before his death, Houdini had told bess that he would try to reach her from the "other side." "Remember this message," he whispered. "'Rosabelle, believe.' When you hear these words, you will know that I am speaking to you from beyond the grave."
...Bess kept a light shining in front of her husband's picture day and night for years. Each Halloween she sat faithfully near the picture and waited. But no message came. On the tenth year after Houdini's death, she turned off the light. "I don't believe he will come," she said.
Robert Kraske
Harry Houdini: Master of Magic
(c)1973 Robert Kraske
Garrard Publishing Company
Champaign, Illinois