Will Heaven be Partitioned?

By Dan Barber

There are many beliefs from many theological philosophies, and pretty much everyone has a strong opinion about whatever they believe to be the truth.

Scientists think they have answered the question about how old the universe is with mathematical formulas and observations and they are certain that it came about with a big bang, and they have even speculated that maybe it wasn’t the first big bang nor will it be the last. No human that we know of was around at that time, and the odds are there won’t be any around for the next, so actual observation is impossible. The smartest theoretical physicist around today can’t say what sparked our big bang. They do postulate that one day our universe will probably collapse back upon itself into another speck of nothing, which will once again explode into a new universe.

Some scientists also think we have multiple universes, which might explain why some people have multiple personalities…maybe?

We all have free will unless we live in an oppressed society like North Korea or some select country or Emirate of the Middle East.

Could it be possible that what we believe the afterlife to be will actually happen to us after death? Will the faithful Christian be met at the pearly gate by Jesus Christ and a host of beautiful Angels? Will the lights go out for the Atheist sending him or her into an eternal blackness?

Some Physicians state that what people experience as a “near death” event is just a chemical reaction in the brain… if that’s the truth it would make sense that our own experiences, beliefs and knowledge would be mixed together to justify our own personal belief of what happens after death. I wonder if any of those physicians have done an actual analysis of the “brain chemicals” of a near death patient to prove what they claim, or do we just have to have “faith” in the truth of what they say? I was once told by a health care professional that there is a reason the phrase “practicing medicine” is used because it is just that…“practicing” meaning that medicine is still not an exact science.

I’m sure of one thing, I have read a lot of reports that many Atheists become religious after a “near death” experience.

I personally accept God as real. I get a great deal of comfort knowing that something will happen after my death… I don’t have a death wish, but as a writer I am very curious to find the definitive answer that many of us chase after our entire life. I can sit for long periods of time and dream about what could happen to our conscious being after death. Is our Heaven personalized for each of us where we get to relive all of the joyous experiences of our life repeatedly? Will we be able to spiritually look after our loved ones we left behind? Will we be ghosts wandering the world of the living forever? Will our souls be recycled and sent back as another of God’s living creatures…human, or critter? Or do we spend all of eternity with every righteous individual who has ever lived and believed?

I sometimes worry about what does eternity feel like? Some people want to live “forever,” not me. I knew at an early age that I would try to live my life as best I could for as long as I could, but I knew that one day I would reach a point where I would be so tired or sick that death would be welcomed. I do not wish to survive any of my loved ones and I don’t want them to mourn my passing. I would hope that they would celebrate my life and have the knowledge that I finally found the answer to a life-long quest.

Some who believe in ancient aliens might think that we were planted on this planet for some unknown reason, also might even be right…how can anyone be so presumptuous to actually know the absolute truth about anything as mysterious as life after death. Perhaps an intellectual being implanted souls in every living thing in the universe to gather knowledge which can then travel back to the great Gathering Of Data (GOD) computer to download the information upon death.

For thousands of years people have been searching for the truth of, who or why they are…you can fill in the blank. I don’t have any answers. But one day I will, however I’m not going to tell you so don’t try to contact me in my afterlife, I will be too busy trying to figure out what I’m going to do to fill all the time I have in eternity.

Own the moment

By Dan Barber

If you don’t want to get wet, don’t give your very young grandsons loaded water guns and then tell them not to squirt you with them! Because if you get wet, you can’t get mad when it’s your own fault… you own the moment.

Besides, how can you punish a toddler who is laughing so hard he can’t move? When dealing with children, you have to be prepared to accept whatever fate they decide for you.

If you have a loving family the meaning for your life has already been chiseled into your headstone… here lays a (fill in the blank). Years ago I attended a mandatory Navy training session at my work designed to make us better people. One of the things we were told was, “when people die they probably don’t wish they could have spent more time at work, they probably wish to have spent more time with family. 

What a concept, we spend so much time working to provide our loved ones with the things we think they need, we sometimes forget to provide the things to them they really need… us.

I spent 20 years on active duty in the Navy and I thought that I was giving my children a great adventure with all of the exotic places where they were able to live and visit. Not long ago I asked my adult daughter what she remembered about growing up as a Navy brat, she replied, “I remember you were always gone.” That shocked me, but it made absolute sense… When a toddler is put in time out for 2-minutes it can seem like a long time for them… but it is only 2-minutes. When a parent is away from their children serving their country for just a few months… to the child that can seem like forever!

I have noticed recently that our elected leaders have been hinting about cutting the defense department benefits budget so the Pentagon can buy better weapons systems and provide better combat training for the troops… that is all great except, if benefit programs for the troops and families are cut there will no longer be any volunteer troops entering the military to operate the new weapons systems or to train in the latest combat operations. Then when our nation is threatened and no one shows up to defend her, our children will be subject to the newly instituted draft!

One of the reasons I served in the military was so my children and grandchildren wouldn’t have to if they didn’t want to.

April is the Month of the Military Child… Honor those children by telling your elected leaders to pay the bill owed to them, own the moment!

What have we done?

By Dan Barber

By allowing someone else to feed you, to house you, to provide all of your care can take away your free will.

How many of us have heard the phrase, from a well-meaning parent, “Eat what I have prepared for you or starve!” I’m sure that many of us, who were rebellious teens, heard Dad state, “While you’re living under this roof, you will follow my rules!” Then there is the fashion statement, “No child of mine dresses like that!”

Parents are just trying to provide what’s best for their children, but for most of us we couldn’t wait until we were old enough to gain our freedom from those rules.

Life is funny when we become responsible adults and parents, we remember those life lessons we inherited from our own parents, including the mandatory response to the question of why, with “Because I told you so!”

One might chuckle at those memories, but as a member of the “baby-boom” generation, I must apologize to society for what we have foisted upon you… the lessons of our parents.

A healthy diet will allow you to live longer so give up those big hamburgers and extra large fries, instead spend your long life eating raw fish and vegetables. Besides the farts of cows, pigs and chickens only pollute and it is cruel to eat them… raw fish is OK as long as they weren’t caught in an area polluted with mercury or radio-activity.

Tobacco use has been proven to be a health risk. I fully agree with this statement and support banning tobacco use in public places. I am one of those former smokers who got my exercise by walking to the designated smoking area in some back alley, who now finds the smell of tobacco smoke as disgusting. Also, seeing someone spit a brown stream of tobacco juice makes me want to puke.  

I now see people in line at the grocery store sucking on what looks like a crack pipe, but it is a device that delivers flavored vapors to the user. Some strawberry loving individual back in the 1960s might have been inspired by the song, “Strawberry Fields Forever” so they invented strawberry wine; I get that… now strawberries can be smoked. If someone likes the flavor of strawberries why don’t they just eat a strawberry instead of inhaling the flavor in the form of a vapor? I really don’t get it.

Back in the late 1980s I worked with an aged art director in Los Angeles who was stuck in the 1960s. He was a really talented graphic artist, who wore his long hair in a pony tail, and refused to wear shoes. He was convinced that legalizing hemp would be the cure for many of society’s woes to include many medical problems, he even wrote a book about his ideas. It seems that he and other like minded baby-boomers have gotten their way because marijuana is on the fast track of being legalized across the country, legitimizing those farming jobs in Northern California; creating Indonesian manufacturing jobs for hemp rope, clothing, sandals and water pipes just to name a few of the related industries. And a bonus is our government has another tax revenue source.

Smoking marijuana in public places is also now legally appropriate in some states. But, if you run into one of those individuals who indulge, don’t ask, “My goodness did you get sprayed by a skunk?”

Just yesterday I noticed what appeared to be a sixty-something gentleman walking down the street, probably heading to the “medical marijuana” shop that used to be the tobacco store, wearing black baggy shorts, flip-flops, a tie-dyed muscle shirt and a backward baseball cap most likely covering his bald spot, with the remaining long grey hair on the back of his head pulled into a pony tail… a mixed metaphor describing my baby boomer generation… or a free-spirited individual ignoring his parent’s dress code?

When your own children put you in the “Shady Acres” nursing home, don’t ask, “Why do I have to move in here?” You’ll get the standard reply, “Because we told you so.”

Happy Vietnam Veterans Day

By Dan Barber

A young me on the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in Vietnam.

During my career with the U.S. Navy, spread out with 20 years on active duty and as a civilian employee for another 20, I attended countless military celebrations marking one thing or another, for many of these events I was there to provide photographic or journalistic coverage.

I have lost count how many of these events that I’ve attended over the years, but I think the most memorable event that I covered was in fact my last, a Hospital Corps Birthday Ball, not long before I retired.

The guest speaker, at this event, was retired Marine Sergeant Major Ray Wilburn, a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. The Sergeant Major was 92 years young and still ramrod straight and fit and trim in his Marine Corps dress uniform. He was asked to be the fill-in guest speaker at this Hospital Corps Ball because the individual originally booked was unable to attend because his flight was cancelled back east due to bad weather.  The Sergeant Major rose from his seat, next to his wife Erma, climbed the stairs to the stage without assistance or even the use of a hand rail. He stood tall at the edge of the stage and delivered a 30 minute talk without a podium, notes or microphone to a hushed crowd. He brought tears and laughter through telling the story about his military and life experiences. 

Many of the young Sailors and Marines in the room knew what this man was talking about because they know of the camaraderie they feel with their fellow brothers and sisters in uniform, and many of them have also witnessed and shared first-hand the devastation that war can bring.

These military events are held to celebrate the milestones of the military organizations that the attendees belong to. Mostly the young people attend so they can show the pride they have of serving their country in uniform.

As I looked around the room at the many young people, I noticed many were still in or barely out of their teen years, and also many of them already had a chest full of medals that were awarded to them for actions they took on the battlefield.

As I write this, I wonder how many Vietnam Veterans are celebrating their day… today March 30, 2014 is actually March 29, 2014 in Vietnam. I have always had mixed emotions about being a Vietnam era veteran. I’m proud of my service, but I don’t feel that anyone owes me anything for that service except for what I’ve actually earned for serving on active duty for 20 years… my military pension, health care for my wife and I and shopping privileges at military exchanges and commissaries.

A few years ago I noticed that my community established a “Welcome Home” party for Vietnam Veterans. I’ve never attended this event because I was already welcomed home from Vietnam by my family… I never felt that I was a victim of Vietnam except maybe for the time I was beaten unconscious by someone who disliked what I represented, a proud young sailor on liberty wearing his uniform, or someone with money in his pocket. In either case the perpetrator’s effort was hollow for them because I had not yet been to Vietnam and if they were looking to rob me I had no money because at the time I was paid but a little more then $100 per month for my service. I never learned the identity of the perpetrator of my beating or what their motive was, and never cared.

I have never set foot on a battlefield, but over the years I’ve seen many young people who have. Years ago I worked with a Sailor who served in Vietnam with the Army. He decided to reenlist in the Navy. In hindsight, this Sailor suffered from severe and untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Which is better understood, and better treated today. Back during Vietnam those returning home from war with this disorder were many times treated like outcasts or criminals because of their “bad” behaviors. My co-worker was very polite and respectful to everyone; he never got into trouble or tried to hurt anyone. The reaction this Sailor had when he heard a loud noise was extreme fright… I don’t know what ever came of this Sailor, but I hope that he received help for his crippling wounds of the mind.

I don’t consider myself as a veteran from any era… I’m just a veteran.

The Age of Enlightenment

By Dan Barber

One of our ancestors discovered that they could use a rock as a tool to crack open nuts and smush up fruit, vegetables and berries for the toothless old clan grandpa… the birth of the stone-age.  

Then someone got tired of just eating veggies, nuts and berries so they added meat to the diet. If anthropologists have it right, this act caused our ancestors brains to grow a bit larger... life once again got a little easier. A new method of food preparation probably happened when someone accidentally dropped the leg of Ground Sloth into the boiling hot springs outside the cave. By the time they found a stick big enough to scoop it out of the scalding water the meat was cooked, and it tasted better after soaking in the hot springs.  

It was then discovered that you could tie the rock tool to the big stick to give a little more power in cracking bigger nuts, and cooked sloth bones to retrieve the high protein marrow. The larger brain led our ancestors to invent even better tools with the sloth bone splinters, and according to the experts in evolution, our ancestors were now able to speak, and started thinking in the abstract… life again got a little easier.  

Then we started speeding along the evolutionary path through the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Middle Ages, Dark Ages etc.

Presently we are in the Silicon Age… I don’t know if life got any easier, but definitely more complicated.  In my humble opinion, life is ever evolving in many different ways in every second of every minute of every hour of every day. 

Some might define their existence by the quality of their life… they measure their meaningful being with skills developed to obtain money or material things. Others search out the spiritual or mystical meaning of their birth by meditating or attending church or participating in retreats in the desert for only $800 per person per day, where they can wallow in a mud puddle with other naked people… or they might even pay a motivator thousands of dollars to guide them to a better understanding of themselves… hopefully without dying in a sweat lodge in an Arizona desert.  I might even start my own motivating business if I could figure out a way to get people to pay me to chase them around the block with a stick to motivate them into doing something. I would have to get a golf cart or scooter because I'm too old to run anymore...Also, I would need a business license so I wouldn’t get arrested for assault.

Uncountable generations of people have hoped for something better than just life since our first ancestors climbed out of the mire of ignorance or the community mud puddle and started to think perhaps there was something better than just living.

Maybe what we have is the best there is… Didn’t God create the heavens and earth?  Maybe when we die we get to replay our earthly experiences over and over again in the realm that God created.  Look around you, what you see could be your heaven… or your hell.  We do have free will to live our lives as we wish -- good or bad. Maybe we should strive to live everyday as if it were the last… sooner or later it will be.  What will your inventory of life experience hold?

      

Those with inflated egos might believe that their life has to have a mystical meaning. They probably can’t or won’t grasp the thought that their parents just had sex, which resulted in conception.  Most of us, me included, just don’t want to dwell upon that disturbing scenario.

My advice…when your children, who believe they are the reason for the universe, grow up, and they try to blame their neurosis on you, just tell them “Your problems are due to a genetic disorder that you inherited from your birth parents”… then walk away.  That bit of information will probably keep them occupied for a while, and they might leave you alone, if that’s what you wish.

      

Even the government is increasingly trying to improve our quality of life or maybe even attempting to define life by telling us what we should or shouldn’t do… from who we should fall in love with (now resolved for the most part except for the legalization of polygamy... the next civil rights case) to what we should eat or drink (still being debated).  

If we were born sometime before 1950, the chances are, our mothers drank and smoked while pregnant with us… most of us turned out OK.  Some of us even went on to become productive citizens who put man on the moon, and discovered that mothers who smoke and drink during pregnancy are potentially harming their unborn children.

We improved society by inventing cable TV so the children of the future wouldn’t be deprived of unlimited cartoon channels like we were… we invented computers and video games so children also wouldn’t have to use their own imaginations for entertainment purposes.   We even created fruity breakfast cereal without even having to use one bit of fruit! We invented fast-food and quickie-lube places for our fast-paced lives and instant gratification.  We even remodeled the old movie palace with the seats covered in plush red velvet into the multi-plex theater complex today, where several shoe-boxed shaped black boxes offer several of Hollywood’s latest releases and endless sequels of past hits, instead of the regular double feature.

     

We cemented in the dangerous creeks running through our neighborhoods and turned them into storm drains to prevent flooding and to keep children from drowning in their favorite swimming hole… they were becoming way too polluted for fishing or swimming anyway.  In their places we built huge water parks with death defying slides with young lifeguards, earning the minimum wage, hanging around talking to other young men or women and waiting to save a child from drowning… all of this for only a nominal entrance fee.

      

After Vietnam we eliminated the draft so now there is no need for junior to move out of Mom and Dad’s comfortable home and seek a deferment from the draft by going to college… after all there are over 100 cable channels to choose from and a multitude of video games to play, and thanks to our lawmakers junior can even stay on his parents health insurance policy until he reaches 26-years of age. Jobs are also plentiful, if junior attended a four-year college. There are the water park life guard openings, lube technicians, or at one of the fast food places on darn near any corner of any city in the country, of course the minimum of a Bachelors degree would be required to compete for those entry level jobs.  Life’s not so bad, is it?

       

Many find life so enjoyable they want to extend it for as long as possible by only eating a healthy diet of uncooked fresh vegetables, fruit, berries and nuts smushed up by an electric food processor into a smoothie, "no meat please!" Also no teeth needed to enjoy this modern meal... in addition it can be consumed at a clothing optional restaurant somewhere in the Bay Area of California.

I'm hoping Heaven will be reruns of good times... I'll met ya'all at the old swimming hole under the Azua Avenue Bridge, or the California Oak Tree grove on Chaulk Hill.

Every One makes a difference to someone

By Dan Barber

Have you ever wondered, what’s your purpose in life?

Be a role model.

My purpose has been defined by my wife, children and grandchildren. Part of that purpose is to love them and to try and set an example for my children and grandchildren to follow as my parents and grandparents did for me. I witnessed my maternal grandfather, Norval Hersh, perform countless unconditional kindnesses to others over the years. He spent most evenings writing letters to everyone he knew, keeping them posted on the events of his life. When I was in the Navy I could look forward to getting at least 3 letters a week from grandpa.

My maternal grandmother, Orby Hersh, who would have turned 111 years old yesterday if she was still alive, started showing me how to be self-sufficient when I was but 5-years old by teaching me to cook. I loved helping her in the kitchen, because she was an exceptional cook. Her pantry was always full of preserved fruits and vegetables. I don’t believe that she ever bought any processed foods at the grocery store. On some weekends my grandfather would drive us out to the country in Nebraska where we would find farmers selling seasonal fruits and vegetables. My grandparents would buy a bushel full of whatever was in season for my grandmother to preserve. Sunday dinners at my grandparents house, was always a very special treat. Happy birthday grandma!

I remember my Dad getting up early every morning during his working life for the commute to his job. I never heard him complain, he always seemed to be cheerful and happy to have a job. My Mom was mostly a stay-at-home Mom until us kids were old enough to take care of ourselves then she started working at a Nursing home as a cook. She too seemed to enjoy what she was doing.

My purpose today was to take two of my youngest grandsons to Knott Sky Park, just a couple of blocks from our home here in Twentynine Palms, Calif., so they could wrestle in the grass and run off some energy. We stayed there until they begged me to take them home…it seemed that it was video-game time. 

Another purpose for me today was to be a driving instructor for a teenaged granddaughter...Then it was my purpose to unwind from an exciting white-knuckle morning by sitting by my pool while enjoying a beer and the spring weather for the rest of the afternoon.

Whenever you get the feeling that no one cares… your loved ones do, because your love for them has an effect, even if it is just a “Butterfly Effect” which in time can grow wings and give you immortality through their memories.

Take notice of people around you, be a role model or mentor in your family, work and neighborhood. Always be ready to perform unconditional kindnesses to others.

Your purpose in life is to make a difference in someone else’s life.

The Cause and effect of human history

By Dan Barber

When I look in the mirror I see that my nose and ears have grown as I’ve aged. It would make me feel better about it if my sense of smell increased rather than decreased and my sense of hearing increased rather than decreased, but no… when did cause and effect go out the window on that evolutionary question?

Maybe if we humans survive on earth as long as the dinosaurs roamed the globe our kind will improve through the evolutionary process… if our growing intellect, intelligent aliens from another world or an asteroid doesn’t destroy our planet first. If that happens then our colonists on Mars will start a heated debate on whether it was God, humans, aliens, or an asteroid that destroyed earth.

If the anthropologists have it right our ancestors climbed out of the mire of ignorance about 200,000 years ago to start the climb on to the evolutionary family tree. From what I’ve read, our forefathers/mothers only started putting down the record of human activity when a clan member decided to spruce up the cave with paintings of animals and other creatures. This activity may have been brought on by the hope of improving the hunt or from ingesting some hallucinogenic berries. Then about 6,000 years ago someone figured out that the doodling they were doing in the mud with a stick could be letters, language and symbols they could use to express an idea to other members of their tribe just by drying out the mud doodles to show them. I personally believe that all of these human activities have caused science and religion to butt heads.

Some orthodox theologians believe God created humans about 6,000 years ago. Maybe they confuse the beginning of human life with the advent of the written record of the human experience. If this is the case it would be much easier for the orthodox to make their case for divine creation by simply saying “metaphorically speaking…” before making any bold statement about what God created. If those believers try to argue their religious points as fact with scientists then they will lose every time. On the other hand when some scientists state that all knowledge is gained through observation or through the use of laws of nature, laws of physics or through experiments demonstrating cause and effect. I would ask them who created the laws of nature, who created the laws of physics and the big one, “what or who created the big bang?”

A couple of years ago I had a conversation about faith with one of my granddaughters when she asked me what I believed… Did I believe in God or Science?

I explained, and wrote in a blog afterwards, that I believed in both because I feel that science cannot exist without God, and God can’t exist without science. 

At about that same time a news story was broadcast about some physicists working on trying to recreate the Higgs Boson also known as the “God particle”… or the spark that science claims created the universe in a “Big Bang.”  The scientists stated that they discovered the particle… but couldn’t really see the spark because it was rediscovered in a mathematical formula… we just had to believe they were right, in other words we just had to have “faith” that their discovery was real.

On one of my favorite TV programs, one of the physicist characters told his physicist roommate that his mathematical formula only worked because he had to create several other universes to make it work.

“Faith,” a belief in something, or maybe the hope, that something exists without physical proof. I was told in my Sunday school class when I was a child that no one could see God, but we know that He exists, we just have to accept Him and have faith.

I have a conversation with God everyday. I thank Him for allowing me to wake each morning so I can have another day of doing what I really enjoy.  I thank Him for the beauty of the Universe that he created from the wonderful “God Particle.”  I thank Him for creating this great planet for all his earthly creatures to live on. I thank Him for the conversations that I can have with my grandchildren who have the faith that their grandfather is mostly right in what he says. I thank God for the laughter of my grandchildren when they laugh at my stories and jokes. I thank God that I can still learn from the wisdom of my family and friends.

Yes, I believe that God and Science are inseparable… without one it is not possible to have the other. And yes, metaphorically speaking, God has a sense of humor; why else would He give old people bigger noses and ears without the added benefit of better smell and sound?