augustmarsblog

  Dying Is Not So Bad The term dying, here, refers to the death of the body, because souls, being offspring of God, cannot die. There is a saying: “Two things in life are certain: death and taxes”. It is intended to be a joke, because taxes are by no means certain, and the idea that death is a part of life is pure irony. However, the death of the body is something that each of us has to face because of its inevitability. It evokes fear, which we attempt to suppress by ignoring it. In this post we want to do what we can to alleviate that fear. First, let's consider the view of the materialist, who rejects the idea that there is any life other than that of a body. I have met people who consider themselves Christians, but they are materialists, because they believe that, although there is such a thing as a spirit, and even that in some sense they may have some existence as a spirit, nonetheless that spirit re...

  Focusing On an Algebra Problem My first real experience with mental focusing was with an algebra problem that I confronted. I had taken pre-algebra in the eighth grade and was a few weeks into ninth grade algebra when the teacher called our attention to a particular problem in the textbook. "If any of you can work that problem," she said, "I will give you an extra A on your test record. I have never had more than one student in a class that could solve it." With that announcement she glanced meaningfully at a boy named Clay, who had been the star of her pre-algebra class. My ego would not let that pass. If Clay did solve that problem, this would be the first year that she would get two solutions. At that time our cooking range was a woodstove placed diagonally across one corner of the kitchen, so that there was a triangular space behind the stove and between the two walls that met at the corner. This small, warm cubbyhole was one of my favorite hiding pl...

                                                                                              PETS Sam and Denise are neighbors who live diagonally across the street from us. Denise is a retired dental assistant, & still likes to talk about dental work and oral hygiene. She is also obsessed with dogs. At one time she had 5, but now that she is older (in her 60's) she is down to 2 Rottweilers, which are big scary dogs. She actually has a bird house that is shaped like a dog's head, so that a bird has to fly into the dog's mouth to make a nest. Both she and Sam are genuinely puzzled by the birds' reluctance to use the house. He has moved it twice, thinking that the birds just don't like ...

  How Loving Is God? In these posts on God the Father my primary purpose is to alleviate any fear of God that the reader may have, because as long as such a fear exists, it will prevent him from having the close relationship with God that is his inborn right and destiny. In the previous post I explained God would not punish us for our misdeeds. In this post, we want to study the depth of God's love for each of us. We have already learned that since He created us for companionship, there are no duplicates. Those souls were not created by one powerful sweep of God's hand, but each one was separately created carefully and lovingly, with its own mind and personality. Among all of those billions of souls that God created, every individual one is so precious to him that He will not neglect it when it makes the decision to return to Him. An example that demonstrates this kind of love is the following experience, which was related by Psychology professor at a major New York City...

                                                       Table of Contents for Memories Label Memories: Introduction & The Neighborhood (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Memories: Pt.2: Child's Play (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Memories 3: A Roanoke Winter (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) The Wileys (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) The Perfect Playmate (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com)   Clubs (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com)   Troop 202 (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) A Weekend at the Farm (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) The Bargers (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Family Ties (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) BELMONT PRESBYTERIAN (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) SCHOOL DAYS (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Hazardous Experiences (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Holidays (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Social Events: Introduction (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Social Events: ...

Accomplishing the Impossible The movie Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, opens with the Kobayashi Maru test being administered to an aspiring starship captain. This test is a simulation of an attack on the student's ship, to test the student's responses to the various calamities resulting from the attack. As each difficulty is dealt with, the simulation computer issues a new, even more difficult, problem until it is no longer humanly possible to handle the situation. It was impossible to win the simulation game. And yet one person, James Kirk, had won it. It was impossible, but he did it. How? He hacked into the simulation computer the night before the test and reprogrammed it. He cheated, but he won. Anything that seems to be impossible is only impossible within the conditions, rules, laws, hypotheses, assumptions, that limit the means that may be taken to accomplish the desired effect. This set of conditions define the paradigm, or “box”, that restricts the mental act...

                                                      Blasting Away in the Neighborhood In my previous post I wrote about our neighbor across the street – the one who has a monster fish aquarium in her living room. Her son Austin is a nice young man, but he has a pick-up truck that is not so nice. He has customized it in a strange way. His mother parks her car in their driveway, and he parks his truck in the grass between their driveway and Sam's lawn. One evening when Sam and I were sitting on his porch, regaling each other with anecdotes about events that occurred 60 years ago, I was suddenly scared out of my wits by what sounded like a cannon firing right behind my back. I jumped up a couple of inches, and then flopped back down, still shaking a bit. Sam was as calm as a cucumber. He chuckled, and ex...