Where are Kirk and Spock (not to mention Dr Mulhall, Lt Troi, Maj Kira, and all the other space babes) when you really need them?

This was inspired by Sixty's post and link to a piece in the Gray Lady about hidden galaxies. If I read the thing another 50 times, I may actually understand it.

I heard once in my undergrad days about how the universe was expanding and I wondered into what (one of my buds admired my "deep thoughts").

This is one of those intellectual toys where you just fool around with an idea to see where it goes.

I mean is there a void beyond the universe? Is that where Heaven is?

Stuff like that.

And where's Kelowitz? Or Riley?

"Pope Francis assures atheists"

"You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven"

In comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation, Pope Francis has written a long, open letter to the founder of La Repubblica newspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, stating that non-believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences.

Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote: “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.

“Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.”

The ultimate sanctuary city.

Marshmallow man finds out he gets into heaven

perception

"You're a human, aren't you?"

(Amused) Yes, I am human. How did you figure that out?

Well pleased with my top deductive reasoning, "I knew it! Your footsteps. You are first person around here in hours with footsteps. You have the weight that no one else has. "

"What are you talking about? "

"Everyone else is gone now, and then there is you."  

There were thousands. Hundreds crowded close by. Dozens packed very near, more people than could possibly fit in the tiny room we were in, and that is odd I admit, but there they were, all packed in, overlapping, and all attention directed on a single person in control of the meeting assembled to direct things. The outer fringes just curious. Everyone else minded him. Completely. There was one main guy a few helpers and thousands of observers, interested somehow in what is going on. Interested somehow in me.

I couldn't move. I was out anyway. But even so tied up with tubes in both arms and wires all over crisscrossing attached to machinery and I didn't know but a tube also inserted into my penis as well. Entirely tubed up, completely wired up, flat on my back unable to turn even a quarter turn, a torture rack, and balanced it seemed on top of a hemorrhoid the size of Montana. 

"What were they doing?" 

"They were telling me how to become well. And I wept because I could not take it all in. I told them hold on, I cannot deal. I told them it is too much. Too much information. Too much all at once. They poured gallons into a pint container.  I cannot process all that they say. I'm missing everyting. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.  They told me don't worry about any of that, they're skipping my brain althogether. They comforted. The told me relax and receive. I asked how? The main guy said they are talking directly to my body, my mind not involved, giving my body instructions directly. Direct instructions on how to heal. Sensing my incomprehension the guy elaborated they are talking directly to my cells. And then I relaxed. 

And now they're gone."

"That did happen. The pulmonary specialist really did issue instructions for you to shut up. He said he never had anyone talk so much as you under anesthesia. He tried to slide the instruments through your mouth but your incessant jabbering risked damaging the equipment and you would not shut up so he inserted the instrument through your nose instead." 

"Oh."

"There really was a medical team here last night.  You were scheduled for lung biopsy anyway, nick off a pice of lung to examine, so when you were wheeled into ICU the doctor decided to do it right then instead and get that out of the way while you are out." 

"Oh." 

"Those clever bastards. They overlap with the physical world. They do the same thing at the same time as the humans except differently, and it is all so plausibly deniable. Oh, that is clever. I don't doubt what you say. Not at all. I accept all that. Yes. But it is minor compared to what really happened, now I know what I know and I know I experienced something quite remarkable, something far more remarkable than mere biopsy. Something I can never forget." 

This nurse took an interest in me for my oddness, I guess.  She came back frequently and just talked. She gave me a thin book about Christian spirituality and other miraculous things, but honestly, it seemed a bit silly and childish compared with what I just lived. 

I survived the pneumonia and the accompanying hemorrhoid the size of Alaska. I could not understand why all the fuss about pneumonia, and lungs and white blood cells, and oxygen and heart rate, blood pressure, and nutrition and nobody cares about fixing this obnoxious giant hemorrhoid the size of Siberia, and said so. That is not funny. "The hemorrhoid is not life-threatening. The other things are." But my ass was most of my misery, the pain that I felt, and nobody cared. There were no spirits for hemorrhoid-healing, the cell-lessons did not extend there.

So when a boy says he saw heaven and reports what he saw, he does know what he knows, and the thing that happened to him will be his possession for the rest of his life. 

There is more to this story. Interesting elements, I think. Some day I might tell the rest.