Dad In Heaven Quotes

Gus: "It tastes like..." Me: "Food." Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?" Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table." Gus: "Nicely phrased." Gus's father: "Our children are weird." My dad: "Nicely phrased.

Alec pulled his knees up to his chest and looked thoughtfully at Jace. “I know,” he said. “I’m not jealous. I always knew, from the first, that everyone thought you were better than me. My dad thought it. The Clave thought it. Izzy and Max looked up to you as the great warrior they wanted to be like. But the day you asked me to be your parabatai, I knew you meant that you trusted me enough to ask me to help you. You were telling me that you weren’t this lone and self-sufficient warrior able to do everything alone. You needed me. So I realized that there was one person who didn’t assume you were better than me. You.

Oh God, I’m a cliché,” he said in despair. “Why do I care? If Dad decides he hates me because I’m not straight, he’s not worth the pain, right?” “Don’t look at me,” said Jace. “My adoptive father was a mass murderer. And I still worried about what he thought. It’s what we’re programmed to do. Your dad always seemed pretty great by comparison. “Sure, he likes you,” said Alec. “You’re heterosexual and have low expectations of father figures.

All that damn therapy you made me go through — and sometimes, Dad, it takes going through hell to reach your heaven.” I looked at the door. “That bad huh?” “What?” “You like her that much?” “No.” I swallowed. “I love her.

Jesus told me that he died on the cross so we could go see his Dad” - Colton Burpo

Where are there lots of colors, Colton?" "In Heaven, Dad. That's where all the rainbow colors are!

I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ...' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ...

If there’s no heaven, I don’t really care. Maybe people are heaven, Dad. Some people, anyway. You and Sam and Fito. Maybe you’re all heaven. Maybe everyone’s heaven, and we just don’t know it.

Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he'll grow up to be a demon just because his dad _became_ one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.

Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die.

Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God served caused multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Dad, Jesus used Dr. O’Holleran to help fix me,” he said, standing at the end of the counter with his hands on his hips. “You need to pay him.

If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale

[Dad] So your intentions were good. That's what matters. [Anthony] But isn't, like, the road to hell paved with good intentions? Yeah, well, so's the road to heaven. And if you spend too much time thinking about where those good intentions are taking you, you know where you end up? Jersey? I was thinking 'nowhere,' but you get the point.

Me: "it does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down all around you canal-siide dinner table." Gus: "Nicely phrased" Gus's father: Our children are weird." My dad: "Nicely phrased

It’s a bit burned,” my mother would say apologetically at every meal, presenting you with a piece of meat that looked like something — a much-loved pet perhaps — salvaged from a tragic house fire. “But I think I scraped off most of the burned part,” she would add, overlooking that this included every bit of it that had once been flesh. Happily, all this suited my father. His palate only responded to two tastes - burned and ice cream — so everything suited him so long as it was sufficiently dark and not too startlingly flavorful. Theirs truly was a marriage made in heaven, for no one could burn food like my mother or eat it like my dad.

I take the sealed envelope from him—​the one that holds the information about my biological father. I ask him for his cigarette lighter. He hands it to me. I look at Sam and Fito and say, “Word for the day.” Sam understands and says, “Nurture.” I take the unopened envelope. I am watching myself as I take the lighter and place it over the edge of the paper. I am watching the envelope burn. I am watching the ashes floating up to the heavens. I am hearing myself as I tell my father, “I know who my father is. I have always known.” And now I am laughing. And my dad is laughing. And Fito is smiling that incredible smile of his. We are watching Sam dance around the yard as Maggie follows her and jumps up and barks. Sam is shouting out to me and the morning sky, “Your name is Salvador! Your name is Salvador! Your name is Salvador!

If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze– and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself– sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale

I smoothed Colton’s blanket across his chest and tucked him in snug the way he liked—and for the first time since he started talking about heaven, I intentionally tried to trip him up. “I remember you saying you stayed with Pop,” I said. “So when it got dark and you went home with Pop, what did you two do?” Suddenly serious, Colton scowled at me. “It doesn’t get dark in heaven, Dad! Who told you that?” I held my ground. “What do you mean it doesn’t get dark?” “God and Jesus light up heaven. It never gets dark. It’s always bright.” The joke was on me. Not only had Colton not fallen for the “when it gets dark in heaven” trick, but he could tell me why it didn’t get dark: “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

Do you ever think of her?' she asked. They were quiet again. All the time,' Ruth said. A chill ran down my spine. 'Sometimes I think she's lucky, you know. I hate this place.' Me too,' Ray said. 'But I've lived other places. This is just a temporary hell, not a permanent one.' You're not implying...' She's in heaven, if you believe in that stuff.' You don't?' I don't think so, no.' I do,' Ruth said. 'I don't mean la-la angel wing crap, but I do think there's a heaven.' Is she happy?' It is heaven, right?' But what does that mean?' The tea was stone-cold and the first bell had already rung. Ruth smiled into her cup. 'Well, as my dad would say, it means she's out of this shithole.' ~pgs 82-83

it’s a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can’t function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don’t care as you can’t hear what they’re saying anyway, and it doesn’t matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don’t seem to matter anymore and things you didn’t think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don’t want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It’s a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven. even your body goes out of control, you can’t eat, you don’t sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything’s just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don’t seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down under your love blanket for more, knowing it’s uncomfortable but compulsory. and then, once you think you’ve got him, the panic sets in. what if he goes off me? what if I blow it, say the wrong thing? what if he meets someone better than me? Prettier, thinner, funnier, more like him? who doesn’t bite there nails? perhaps he doesn’t feel the same, maybe this is all in my head and this is just a quick fling for him. why did I tell him that stupid story about not owning up that I knew who spilt the ink on the teachers bag and so everyone was punished for it? does he think I'm a liar? what if I'm not very good at that blow job thing and he’s just being patient with me? he says he loves me; yes, well, we can all say words, can’t we? perhaps he’s just being polite. of course you do your best to keep all this to yourself, you don’t want him to think you're a neurotic nutcase, but now when he’s away doing Real Life it’s agony, your mind won’t leave you alone, it tortures you and examines your every moment spent together, pointing out how stupid you’ve been to allow yourself to get this carried away, how insane you are to imagine someone would feel like that about you. dad did his best to reassure me, but nothing he said made a difference - it was like I wanted to see Simon, but didn’t want him to see me.

We spoke of death, not in a morbid way, but in a pragmatic one. "It will come," Dad said. "But for now, heaven is here.

My dad: “Emily, this risotto…” My mom: “It’s just delicious.” Gus’s mom: “Oh, thanks. I’d be happy to give you the recipe.” Gus, swallowing a bite: “You know, this primary taste I’m getting is not-Oranjee.” Me: “Good observation, Gus. This food, while delicious, does not taste like Oranjee.” My mom: “Hazel.” Gus: “It tastes like…” Me: “Food.” Gus: “Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately…?” Me: “It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down all around your canal-side dinner table.” Gus: “Nicely phrased.” Gus’s father: “Our children are weird.” My dad: “Nicely phrased.

As a rule, you knew it was time to eat when you could hear potatoes exploding in the oven. Happily, all this suited my father. His palate only responded to two tastes - burned and ice cream - so everything suited him so long as it was sufficiently dark and not startlingly flavorful. Theirs truly was a marriage made in heaven, for no one could burn food like my mother or eat it like my Dad.

It’s the only thing we can do. And not just for our sake, you know? It’s for the other kids, too, even if they don’t realize it. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is we understand it, you and me. We get it. And, like, in that way, living with this weakness, accepting it completely, that’s the greatest strength in the whole world. It’s not just my dad or them or us. We do it for everyone who’s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.

I love you dad More than you'll ever know I know you'll be in heaven as a shining star No matter how faraway you go You are never too far

Thomas Builds-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: “I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign. I knew I had to go there but I didn’t have a car. Didn’t have a license. I was only thirteen. So I walked all the way, took me all day, and I finally made it to the falls. I stood there for an hour waiting. Then your dad came walking up. ‘What the hell are you doing here? He asked me. I said, ‘waiting for a vision.’ Then your father said, ‘All you’re going to get here is mugged.’ So he drove me to Denny’s, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation. For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me. But they didn’t. Your dad was my vision. ‘Take care of each other’ is what my dreams were saying. ‘Take care of each other.

The moment I fell, my wings wilted like roses left too long in the vase. The misery of the bare back is to live after flight, to be the low that will never again rise. “To live on land is to live in a dimming station, but to fly above, everything sparkles, everything is endlessly crystal. Even the dry dirt improves to jewel when you can be the wings over it. “To be removed from flight is to be removed from the comet lines, the star-soaked song. How can I go on from that? How can I be something of value when I’ve lost my most valuable me? Land is my forever now, my thoroughly ended heaven. No sky will have me, no God either. “I am the warning to all little children before bedtime. Say your prayers, be done with sin, lest you become the devil, the one too sunk, no save will have him.” Dad

I figure heaven will be a scratch-and-sniff sort of place, and one of my first requests will be the Driftwood in its prime, while it was filled with our life. And later I will ask for the smell of my dad's truck, which was a combination of basic truck (nearly universal), plus his cologne (Old Spice), unfiltered Lucky Strikes, and when I was very lucky, leaded gasoline. If I could have gotten my nose close enough I would have inhaled leaded gasoline until I was retarded. The tendency seemed to run in my family; as a boy my uncle Crandall had an ongoing relationship with a gas can he kept in the barn. Later he married and divorced the same woman four times, sometimes marrying other women in between, including one whose name was, honestly, Squirrelly.

The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart.

Dad was on the porch, pacing back and forth in that uneven stride he had on account of having a gimp leg. When he saw, he let out a yelp of delight and started hobbling down the steps towards us. Mom came running out of the house. She sank down on her knees, clasped her hands in front of her, and started praying up to the heavens, thanking the Lord for delivering her children from the flood. It was she who had saved us, she declared, by staying up all night praying. "You get down on your knees and thank your guardian angel," she said. "And thank me, too." Helen and Buster got down and started praying with Mom, but I just stood there looking at them. The way I saw it. I was the one who'd saved us all, not Mom and not some guardian angel. No one was up in that cottonwood tree except the three of us. Dad came alongside me and put his arms around my shoulders. "There weren't no guardian angel, Dad," I said. I started explaining how I'd gotten us to the cottonwood tree in time, figuring out how to switch places when our arms got tired and keeping Buster and Helen awake through the long night by quizzing them. Dad squeezed my shoulder. "Well, darling," he said, "maybe the angel was you.

Heavenly Father, I promise never again (or for three business days, whichever comes first) to take your blessings for granted if your boundless wisdom can manifest to smite this motherfucker. I don’t know, rain down some sulphur, whisper divine suggestion into his ear, even the old salt pillar trick would suffice. But ... I will take up thy sword and act as the county’s mortal archangel once again if I must. I swear to your oft-alleged earthly son that if this thug doesn’t put the toddler down and stop swinging that oversized plastic bat at us, he’ll spend his weekend removing my well-shined size eleven Florsheim from his PCP-smoking ass at the Ballard Institute for Deadbeat Dad Castration.

Now, my dad likes to joke that heaven to him is thousands of miles of marshlands and cypress breaks without a game warden (or any kind of concrete) in sight!

You’re probably just like my dad. You have this kind of pride. Honor, he called it. But these days, honor is for suckers, and that makes you angry.

If we want to raise children who will remain faithful to Christ and His Church, they need to see fathers on their knees in prayer.

Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem just a tad distracted,” she said in a mischievous way. “My dad would have said you are jumping around like a fart in a skillet.

Ro will lose her dad, she’ll visit him every week, he’s still on Earth but already belongs to Heaven.

I love you dad More than you'll ever know I know you'll be in heaven as a shining star No matter how faraway you go You are never too far

Any time I found myself wavering- thinking about death or dying or ends or Dad or the ToD -I'd force myself to think about June instead... Think about June. Flip my mind overtop of itself, push everything else out until she's all that's left. June laughing at a joke I'd made, or June speaking, or June existing. This didn't serve, exactly, to balance me on the tightrope; it disintegrated the tightrope. It made it so the tightrope had never existed at all. There was no gravity. I could float there, comfortable, and never worry about the fall ever again. What's the point of living it- June. We're all going to die and the universe is indifferent and- June. Her hands on me and her face close to mine but what does it matter if she, if Dad- June. June sitting in the driver's seat. Dad decomposing in the driver's seat- June. Heaven is June in the driver's seat. Hell is June in the driver's seat. There is only June in the driver's seat. And at night, my consciousness would slip away, repeating that smooth, delicious mantra in my head. There is only June in the driver's seat.

Jesus was stoned, but no rock hit him. He slipped into the crowd and was found later teaching on a hill somewhere. History tells us that he did nothing wrong, and we sacrificed him anyway. The day my father died, I assured him he was headed for heaven, though I had a hard time believing in something that floated so aimlessly through the minds of children. The concept seemed fair and unfair in such equal amounts that it appeared to cancel itself out. I’d never met someone so deserving of eternal bliss, yet from the time I was a child I was taught we all deserve hell. I wondered if heaven existed at all. But I wanted everlasting life to be real for the man who let me lie on his chest on a hammock in the backyard and taught me not to fear thunder. One of the many things my father taught me not to fear. His breaths were labored and aided by machines. He wore a white hospital gown. I remember thinking, “I can’t believe my father’s going to die in a gown.” “Are you afraid?” I asked. “Not at all,” he strained. “I’m going to be with the Lord.” I wished I shared his confidence. For him, it was a priceless thing no one could take. I wished the fear of death was like the fear of a passing storm cloud—something we outgrow with understanding. For men like my dad, I guess it was.

Boys are found everywhere- on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerated them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them. A boy is Truth with dirt on its face, Beauty with a cut on its finger, Wisdom with bubble gum in its hair and the Hope of the future with a frog in its pocket. A boy is a magical creature- you can lock out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart. You can get him out of your study, but you can't get him out of your mind. Might as well give up- he is your captor, your jailor, your boss and your master- a freckled-faced, pint-sized, cat-chasing bundle of noise. But when you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them like new with two magic words- 'Hi, Dad!

You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, the little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that was not built for them by navigating a playground that was. Dad saw me watching the kids and said, "You miss running around like that?" "Sometimes, I guess." But that wasn't what I was thinking about. I was just trying to notice everything: the light on the ruined Ruins, this little kid who could barely walk discovering a stick at the corner of the playground, my indefatigable mother zigzagging mustard across her turkey sandwich, my dad patting his handheld in his pocket and resisting the urge to check it, a guy throwing a Frisbee that his dog kept running under and catching and returning to him. Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.

I think if you live in Brooklyn and you order pizza from a Dominos, you're a loser. I don't believe in Heaven or Hell, but I believe if you order a Brooklyn Dominos pizza, you're going to Hell. This is based in scripture.

If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale

He draws a perfect heart on his menu. “Yeah, I’m lucky. My dad tells me we don’t need her. His heart beats twice as hard for me to cover for her part.” There’s a hitch in my breath. I fall a little in love with Brance Stone in that moment. Heaven help me.

Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he'll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.

It was a huge misconception that my father created all the chaos and evil on Earth. Mortals were given free will by my Uncle God, and they created evil all by their lonesome. My dad got to punish the you know what out of those idiots who choose to be heinously bad. And quite honestly some of them deserved my dad’s wrath. He loved his job. Another misconception is that Hell is below and Heaven is above. What does that even mean? Nothing is up or down, that’s just human mythology. Most likely the mistake was made because Hell was occasionally called the Underworld. Hell and Heaven are simply on different planes, accessible through portals. Earth was modeled after a combination of the seasons, climates and terrains of Heaven and Hell. We all shared the same moon and sun and stars.

What if . . . what if heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to your for no reason, or . . . ' Mam's pancakes with Mars Bar sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing "For She's a Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. "S'pose heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there forever, but more like . . . like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or . . . upstairs windows when you're lost . . .

Another quirk of Dad's was that although he could remember an infinite number of intricate surgical maneuvers and enough random details and trivia to run any Jeopardy! champion under the table, he found it patently impossible to remember basic things like phone numbers, appointments, or what in the world he had actually walked into the room to do. To mitigate this flaw, he wrote everything down, usually on whatever was handiest. This left his office looking like the heavens had opened and rained leaves of paper for forty days and forty nights.

Coleman: It’s always the best ones go to hell. Me, probably straight to heaven I’ll go, even though I blew the head off poor dad. So long as I go confessing to it anyways. That’s the good thing about being Catholic. You can shoot your dad in the head and it doesn’t even matter at all.

Sometime during eternity some guys show up and one of them who shows up real late is a kind of carpenter from some square-type place like Galilee and he starts wailing and claiming he is hep to who made heaven and earth and that the cat who really laid it on us is his Dad

Where is she now, Dad? If there's a heaven, Maggie, she's there and she's queen of it. Is there a heaven, Dad? If there isn't, Maggie, I don't understand God's ways. She doesn't understand my babbling and neither do I because the tears erupt and she tells me again, It's all right to cry, Dad.

Mrs. Winterson didn't want her body resurrected because she had never, ever loved it, not even for a single minute of a single day But although she believed in End Time, she felt that the bodily resurrection was unscientific. When I asked her about this she told me she had seen Pathé newsreels of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and she knew all about Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. She had lived through the war. Her brother had been in the air force, my dad had been in the army -- it was their life, not their history. She said that after the atomic bomb you couldn't believe in mass any more, it was all about energy. 'This life is all mass. When we go, we'll be all energy, that's all there is to it.' I have thought about this a lot over the years. She had understood something infinitely complex and absolutely simple. For her, in the Book of Revelation, the 'things of the world' that would pass away, 'heaven and earth rolled up like a scroll,' were demonstrations of the inevitable movement from mass to energy. Her uncle, her beloved mother's beloved brother, had been a scientist. She was an intelligent woman, and somewhere in the middle of the insane theology and the brutal politics, the flamboyant depression and the refusal of books, of knowledge, of life, she had watched the atomic bomb go off and realised that the true nature of the world is energy not mass. But she never understood that energy could have been her own true nature while she was alive. She did not need to be trapped in mass.

Mama,” the child exclaimed, breathless and agitated. Phoebe looked down at him in concern. “Justin, what is it?” “Galoshes brought me a dead mouse. She dropped it on the floor right in front of me!” “Oh, dear.” Tenderly Phoebe smoothed his dark, ruffled hair. “I’m afraid that’s what cats do. She thought it was a fine gift.” “Nanny won’t touch it, and the housemaid screamed, and I had a fight with Ivo.” Although Phoebe’s younger brother Ivo was technically Justin’s uncle, the boys were close enough in age to play together and quarrel. “About the mouse?” Phoebe asked sympathetically. “No, before the mouse. Ivo said there’s going to be a honeymoon and I can’t go because it’s for grownups.” The boy tilted his head back to look up at her, his lower lip quivering. “You wouldn’t go to the honeymoon without me, would you, Mama?” “Darling, we’ve made no plans to travel yet. There’s too much to be done here, and we all need time to settle in. Perhaps in the spring—” “Dad wouldn’t want to leave me behind. I know he wouldn’t!” In the electrified silence that followed, Tom shot a glance at West, who looked blank and startled. Slowly Phoebe lowered to the ground until her face was level with her son’s. “Do you mean Uncle West?” she asked gently. “Is that what you’re calling him now?” Justin nodded. “I don’t want him to be my uncle—I already have too many of those. And if I don’t have a dad, I’ll never learn how to tie my shoes.” Phoebe began to smile. “Why not call him Papa?” she suggested. “If I did, you’d never know which one I was talking about,” Justin said reasonably, “the one in heaven or the one down here.” Phoebe let out a breath of amusement. “You’re right, my clever boy.” Justin looked up at the tall man beside him with a flicker of uncertainty. “I can call you Dad … can’t I? Do you like that name?” A change came over West’s face, his color deepening, small muscles contorting with some powerful emotion. He snatched Justin up, one of his large hands clasping the small head as he kissed his cheek. “I love that name,” West said unsteadily. “I love it.” The boy’s arms went around his neck. “Can we go to Africa for our honeymoon, Dad?” he heard Justin ask. “Yes,” came West’s muffled voice. “Can I have a pet crocodile, Dad?” “Yes.” Phoebe produced a handkerchief from seemingly out of nowhere and tucked it discreetly into one of West’s hands.

The return to the "Father from whom all fatherhood takes its name" allows me to let my dad be no less than the good, loving, but limited human being he is, and to let my heavenly Father be the God whose unlimited, unconditional love melts away all resentments and anger and makes me free to love beyond the need to please or find approval.

It's weird not being in our subculture of two any more. There was Jen's culture, her little habits and ways of doing things; the collection of stuff she'd already learnt she loved before we met me. Chorizo and Jonathan Franken and long walks and the Eagles (her dad). Seeing the Christmas lights. Taylor Swift, frying pans in the dishwasher, the works absolutely, arsewipe, heaven. Tracy Chapman and prawn jalfrezi and Muriel Spark and HP sauce in bacon sandwiches. And then there was my culture. Steve Martin and Aston Villa and New York and E.T. Chicken bhuna, strange-looking cats and always having squash or cans of soft drinks in the house. The Cure. Pink Floyd. Kanye West, friend eggs, ten hours' sleep, ketchup in bacon sandwiches. Never missing dental check-ups. Sister Sledge (my mum). Watching TV even if the weather is nice. Cadbury's Caramel. John and Paul and George and Ringo. And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more. Period dramas on a Sunday night. That one perfect vibrator that finished her off in seconds when we were in a rush. Gravy. David Hockney. Truffle crisps. Can you believe it? I still can't believe it. A smell indisputably reminiscent of bums. On a crisp. And yet we couldn't get enough of them together - stuffing them in our gobs, her hand on my chest, me trying not to get crumbs in her hair as we watched Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I'm not a member of that club anymore. No one is. It's been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where so I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I'm no longer a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

Okay, do you guys feel protected?” “I do,” Archer said. “Also, a little violated, but that’s neither here nor there.” I rolled my eyes. “You two?” “Yeah,” Cal said. “Whatever you did, I think it worked.” “Same,” Jenna added. “Awesome.” I started walking forward, the other following. “Archer, any helpful factoids about demonglass you’d like to offer up?” “Um, okay. Well, after the war in heaven, the angels who fought on the wrong side were stripped down to just their most basic level.” “Right,” I nodded. “Dad told me that. Demons are just pure dark magic, nothing more. Until they’re put in a body, obviously.” “I don’t know, there are times when you seem like you’re just pure dark-ow.” Archer broke off as I poked him in the ribs. “Anyway, the demons were forced into another dimension. What people call hell, or the Underworld, or whatever. Supposedly-and for us, hopefully-that’s where you find demonglass. Which, really, is nothing more than rock that’s been permeated with all that dark magic. Demon Kryptonite, basically.” “So we’re going into another dimension?” Jenna asked, her voice wavering a little. “Like what the Itineris does?” “That’s the idea,” Archer replied. Seeing as how the Itineris almost always left Jenna trying not to cough out her inner organs, I understood why she sounded a little freaked out. “This doesn’t feel like another dimension, though,” I said. “It just feels like-“ “A cave,” Cal said. “Yeah, a cave.” As soon as I said that, my heart started to pound. Ugh, this new claustrophobia thing was highly annoying.

Marriage is about so much more than sex. It takes a lot of work on a daily basis to have a successful relationship. Missy and I are spiritual partners and best friends, despite the constant changing of circumstances. I have realized that my dad was right, women are strange, but the differences we have keep life interesting. The righteous acts we commit in overcoming our differences are what make marriage exciting. It does not matter to me where we live or what we drive; what matters is the person I have chosen to be with and how long we reside together. My number one goal in life is to help my wife and kids get to heaven, where we plan to live together as part of a forever family. While we are on this earth I try to live out on a daily basis the words of Joshua 24:15: “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

My brothers, we have a special and distinct role as Christian men, fathers, husbands, and leaders in the family, in the Church, and in society at large. If we don’t step up, we run the risk of seeing our families overrun and absorbed by the surrounding culture. This is not acceptable. Start with prayer. Be faithful, be consistent, have courage, show humility, and remember . . . we are made for a heavenly home and not this world.

Oh, do you, Milo? You’re so selfish. You don’t see the bigger picture.” “What’s the bigger picture?” “You’re still here looking for handouts. Who’s going to take care of me?” “I’m on my knees here, Mom. Not for me, for my family. For my wife. For a beautiful grandson you have totally ignored.” “He’s kind of a brat. I’ll be in his life when he gets a little impulse control.” “He’s not even four.” “I have needs. I’m tired of this child-worshipping culture. You’re just a slave to it, Milo.” “I’m only trying to be a decent dad.” “Don’t waste your time. It’s not in your genes. Besides, try making some money. That might be a good dad move. For heaven’s sake, the system’s rigged for white men and you still can’t tap in.” “You’re right, Mom. What can I say? But still, it would mean a lot to me if you made a little more of an effort with Bernie.” “Bernie schmernie. This is my decade.” “Okay, you wrinkled old spidercunt, have it your way.

Your parents must feel terrible." "Not really. Dad says all things work together for the good of the Kingdom." If there was a kingdom, Brig had been left out of it. He wanted to say as much, to tell her that this kingdom business was what you said when you didn't want your daughter blaming you for Brazil, except, here she stood, one-arm-happy, and Brig had the strongest sensation that it wasn't his place to say. Instead, he said: "And you're sure of that? That all things work together for good?

Don’t tell me from genetics. What’ve they got to do with it?’ said Crowley. ‘Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.

My mother was in charge of language. My father had never really learned to read - he could manage slowly, with his fingers on the line, but he had left school at twelve and gone to work at the Liverpool docks. Before he was twelve, no one had bothered to read to him. His own father had been a drunk who often took his small son to the pub with him, left him outside, staggered out hours later and walked home, and forgot my dad, asleep in a doorway. Dad loved Mrs Winterson reading out loud - and I did too. She always stood up while we two sat down, and it was intimate and impressive all at the same time. She read the Bible every night for half an hour, starting at the beginning, and making her way through all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. When she got to her favourite bit, the Book of Revelation, and the Apocalypse, and everyone being exploded and the Devil in the bottomless pit, she gave us all a week off to think about things. Then she started again, Genesis Chapter One. 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...' It seemed to me to be a lot of work to make a whole planet, a whole universe, and blow it up, but that is one of the problems with the literal-minded versions of Christianity; why look after the planet when you know it is all going to end in pieces?

Their dad said, “Heaven is beautiful like your mother was beautiful, but like it beauty is fleeting and once beheld for years, for decades, gold that seemed precious and unique no longer holds the significance it once held to the one who has possessed it and been possessed by it. And heaven resides in God’s breast, not the true god, for there is no true god, only many faces and many incarnations of want, of structure, of meaning. And his heart-tent is vast drawing to it those who swear allegiance to beauty and partial truth. Partial,” their father said, stroking Maggie’s arm, “because truth is independent of religion or creed or upbringing. It is a matter of the heart, separate from fact, without the limitations of doctrine. And what would heaven feel like? More of the same corrupt single-mindedness of a deity who abhors independence, who truly and fiercely fights the accumulation of knowledge in its worshipers. So the weak run to it, the road-weary, the undecided. Because God makes things easy, they do not have to make choices for themselves, they do not have to study the greater mysteries that echo like a clarion call in their souls and resonate in their hearts, seeds planted in the dark soil of their youth that are burned to chaff in the commonplace, never tilled or watered, hopeless due to acquiescence.

As I look back on this spiritual event, I see it as a true return, the return from a false dependence on a human father who cannot give me all I need to a true dependence on the divine Father who says: "You are with me always, and all I have is yours"; the return also from my complaining, comparing, resentful self to my true self that is free to give and receive love...The return to the "Father from whom all fatherhood takes its name" allows me to let my dad be no less than the good, loving, but limited human being he is, and to let my heavenly Father be the God whose unlimited, unconditional love melts away all resentments and anger and makes me free to love beyond the need to please or find approval.

Rosemary Klein, Winchester, England: Always keep your knees together, ladies; they are best friends. Sister Rosemary Carroll, R.I.P. Katy Kidd Wright, a friend who described herself as a “non-RC heathen raising RC kids going to Catholic schools” confirmed that ashes on foreheads was still in vogue. “The modern curriculum even has a robotics lesson in Grade 2 where my eldest learned to mechanize Mary and Joseph's walk to Bethlehem.” In my school days, we wrote JMJ on the top of scribbler pages for a Holy Family Jesus, Mary, and Joseph blessing. Other times, we wrote BVM for the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was an alphabet acronym heaven. Whenever Dad felt no one was listening to him, he spoke to the Blessed Virgin Mary statue on the living room mantle. They talked a lot.

What if … what if heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dying of thirst, or when someone’s nice to you for no reason, or …” Mam’s pancakes with Mars Bar sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, “Sleep tight don’t let the bedbugs bite”; or Jacko and Sharon singing “For She’s a Squishy Marshmallow” instead of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it’s not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. “S’pose heaven’s not like a painting that’s just hanging there forever, but more like … like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you’re alive, from passing cars, or … upstairs windows when you’re lost …

The previous year, I had really taken an interest in the opposite sex, but it all seemed pretty natural. It all changed one night when I was in the ninth grade. I went with a buddy to a swimming party, where we met two girls whom we were both interested in. As the night went on, we found ourselves alone in a room with the girls. The girl I liked asked me to help her undress. I was very attracted to her, and she was pretty healthy for a ninth grader. As I looked back at my buddy cheering me on, the only thing I could think of was my dad’s admonition--and three letters, R-U-N! I ran out of the room, and the abuse I took from my buddies over the next few days was probably the worst I ever experienced. From then on, I decided to shy away from girls with questionable reputations and focus on those who could possibly help me spiritually and help get me to heaven. I didn’t feel I was strong enough to stay pure unless both parties had the same goal.

When the candle burned low, and the rats began to eat, I would put out the light and lie awake in the dark. I would listen to Mum and Dad snoring on the bed. Sometimes when I fell asleep a lighter part of me rose up from my body and floated in the dark. A bright light, which I could not see, but which I could feel, surrounded me. I would be lifted out of my body, would find it difficult to get out through the roof, and would be brought down suddenly by the noise of the rats eating. Then I would sleep soundly. One night I managed to lift myself out through the roof. I went up at breathtaking speed and stars fell from me. Unable to control my motion, I rose and fell and went in all directions, spinning through incredible peaks and vortexes. Dizzy and turning, swirling and dancing, the darkness seemed infinite, without signs, without markings. I rose without getting to heaven. I soared blissfully and I understood something of the inhuman exultation of flight.

We took the kids to see Chris’s body the next day. He’d been cleaned up a lot. Leanne had suggested that we have a photo book with pictures of Chris; it was a brilliant idea, a way of putting their good-byes in a better, if not exactly happy, context. Before going in, I told them they were going to see their father’s body without his soul. Their dad was now in heaven; all they were going to see was the body God had loaned him for this world. How much comfort that was, I don’t know. Bubba stood near him for a bit, then decided he was done. At some point he told me he didn’t like to cry. “It hurts too much when I cry.” Instead, he would run hard, play hard. The thing about grief is, we all do it in our own way, in our own time, kids included. He went out with V and they sat together on a couch, looking at the book. Within a few moments I heard V’s deep voice boom; laughter echoed in the hall. Bubba was telling him stories about his father, reminding him and all of us who Chris really was. Angel and I stayed with Chris. “Can I touch his hand?” she asked. “Yes.” There was a flower in the room. She put it on him.

Myles P. doesn’t resist, he sinks down and down, letting the sound of Willard’s lisp close over him light as a foaming wave and he drifts gently down, without a gurgle, past the floating beds of giant kelp and the abalone-eating otters, the unschooled senoritas and egg-filled cabezon, he thinks he might touch his toes to the bottom when he gets there and wonders if it will be mud or just more cement. 'Meaning other animals, shoot, soon as the young’s able to hunt or run, mother takes off and dad’s eyeing the offsprung for dinner. But we can’t let ours be, colic to college, we’re constantly wiping their little booger’d noses, dolling out free dough and freer advice, thinking they’ll powder our own asses later in the home. But a baby’s just a for-instance, fact is, others never tender the way you do. Species’d peter, rent’d come due.' Willard goes to Hiro, 'The punchline, my friend, is giving without wanting’s the trick once you’ve managed that, you’ve partly pierced heaven a bunghole, but it’s a pure penniless instigation that you ain’t got ‘n ain’t gonna get got, ‘n ain’t gonna get it, not on no roadfuckingtrip.' 'Meaning?' says Hiro 'Meaning love’s all true.

Despite our differences, Missy and I built a foundation for our marriage in Christ. Before we were married, we were mocked by some of our friends and acquaintances for being virgins. I remember one of my friends constantly belittling me and saying I needed to experience sex before marriage just to know what to do and how to do it. I saw him years later and quickly told him, “I’ve got three kids. I figured it out.” Marriage is about so much more than sex. It takes a lot of work on a daily basis to have a successful relationship. Missy and I are spiritual partners and best friends, despite the constant changing of circumstances. I have realized that my dad was right, women are strange, but the differences we have keep life interesting. The righteous acts we commit in overcoming our differences are what make marriage exciting. It does not matter to me where we live or what we drive; what matters is the person I have chosen to be with and how long we reside together. My number one goal in life is to help my wife and kids get to heaven, where we plan to live together as part of a forever family. While we are on this earth I try to live out on a daily basis the words of Joshua 24:15: “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

[THE DAILY BREATH] Do you remember the first day of school, when your mom and dad gave you the new uniform, the shiny shoes and a little lunch box with fresh food made that morning? The mystery of your relationship with our Heavenly Father is mirrored in your relationship with your children. For the first 5-6 years of your life, you never asked nor worried about your school uniform, the shoes you will wear or the lunch box for the first day of school. Probably you didn't even know you needed them before school started and you did get them. Your parents knew you needed them, and when the moment arrived, you received them. You didn't get them before or after, but when the moment of need arrived. You might understand now what our Heavenly Father meant when He said: "I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers." Jesus reaffirmed this message when He said: "Your Father knows you need all these even before you even ask Him." Do not worry about the future. There is perfect peace in this moment. Do not worry. Today only remember and trust your Heavenly parent, the One who breathed life into your body and spirit. He will give you all you need. When the moment arrives.

DAY 137 Laser Tag “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” ROMANS 8:31 A few years ago my daughter was invited to a laser tag birthday party. She was little, and the laser tag vest and gun were huge, which made it hard for her to play. The first time through, she didn’t do well at all. She was an easy target for the more experienced players, and she got shot—a lot! She was pretty discouraged, but before the next round started, one of the dads handed me a vest and said, “Go get ’em, Dad.” I got the message. I followed close behind my daughter and picked off any kids foolish enough to come near her. By the end of the round, the kids knew that she was no longer an easy target. Her daddy was there, and he was not to be messed with. It was awesome. Her score that round vastly improved, bringing a big smile to her face. When we go into the arena alone, it’s easy to get picked on, singled out, and told that we are destined to fail. But when we go into battle with our heavenly Father’s protection and covering, everything changes. Not only do we have a chance to stay alive, we have a guaranteed win. PRAYER Thank you, Father, for fighting for me, keeping me safe, and helping me come through as a victor. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

In Luke’s own experience with loss, he didn’t turn to God for comfort. Although a believer as a child, he had become an atheist by his mid-twenties. And it was then, just as his atheism was overshadowing his theism, that his beloved father unexpectedly died the day after Christmas. “So that was really a test of my atheism, when my dad died. I mean, I was like, ‘If this is true that there isn’t a God, then I’ll never see my dad again. He’s not in heaven. There is no afterlife.’ I really had to seriously think about the implications of that. And I did—very deeply and very seriously. And I knew that I just couldn’t believe any of it. My dad was gone, and that was that. But it was actually not as traumatic as you might expect, because I found that I didn’t need to believe all that religious stuff from my childhood in order to feel better. I still had the memory of my father, and that was good enough. The things that I valued about my dad were still there, inside of me. He lives on in me, and in my brothers. Why did I need to think he was in heaven looking down at me? Why did I need to think I would someday meet him again? In all honesty, I think those things seem kind of weird to me now.” But how did he cope, exactly, when his dad died? “Friends and family. Friends and family. That’s it.

Over the next few days we spent every waking moment together. We made up silly dances, did puzzles in the evening, and she stood smiling on the beach waiting for me as I took my customary New Year’s dip in the freezing cold North Atlantic. I just had a sense that we were meant to be. I even found out she lived in the next-door road along from where I was renting a room from a friend in London. What were the chances of that? As the week drew to a close we both got ready to head back south to London. She was flying. I was driving. “I’ll beat you to London,” I challenged her. She smiled knowingly. “No, you won’t.” (But I love your spirit.) She, of course, won. It took me ten hours to drive. But at 10:00 P.M. that same night I turned up at her door and knocked. She answered in her pajamas. “Damn, you were right,” I said, laughing. “Shall we go for some supper together?” “I’m in my pajamas, Bear.” “I know, and you look amazing. Put a coat on. Come on.” And so she did. Our first date, and Shara in her pajamas. Now here was a cool girl. From then on we were rarely apart. I delivered love letters to her office by day and persuaded her to take endless afternoons off. We roller-skated in the parks, and I took her down to the Isle of Wight for the weekends. Mum and Dad had since moved to my grandfather’s old house in Dorset, and had rented out our cottage on the island. But we still had an old caravan parked down the side of the house, hidden under a load of bushes, so any of the family could sneak into it when they wanted. The floors were rotten and the bath full of bugs, but neither Shara nor I cared. It was heaven just to be together. Within a week I knew she was the one for me and within a fortnight we had told each other that we loved each other, heart and soul. Deep down I knew that this was going to make having to go away to Everest for three and a half months very hard. But if I survived, I promised myself that I would marry this girl.

No, he walks funny because he only has one leg.” “His leg fell off because he ate my fudge?!” Raj looked to the heavens again and put his hands together in prayer. “Lord, please have mercy on my soul! I am not a bad man. I just use best-before dates as a very rough guide, rounding them up to the nearest decade!

Mom and Dad tried to use their own ladder and rope, but after two hours, they finally decided to call 911, and the Briaroaks Fire Department answered the call.” “It wasn’t two hours,” I said. “What kinda parents would wait two hours to call 911?

So for most people, the reason they don't win financially is because the pain of losing money is far greater that the joy of being rich. Another saying in Texas is, "Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die." Most people dream of being rich, but are terrified of losing money. So they never get to Heaven.

Reine-Marie put her head back and laughed. Armand smiled, then turned full circle. His gaze took in the dark forests and luminous homes, the three huge pines and the soft snow falling from the sky, as though the Heavens had opened, and all the angels were joining them. Here. Here. “Dad.” Armand turned.

Okay, here's the deal. You sign that piece of paper." She leans across the table and points to the line where my signature goes. "Then you take this name." She shakes the paper in front of my face. "And you collect the first person's soul. I send you two more. You collect them. And bam, you get to move on to paradise. Your dad will be there.

It was getting late. He’d better go home before his mom got too worried. If his mom got worried, his dad would get upset; if his dad got upset, his sisters would get mad; and when his sisters got mad, it was bad news.

One of the greatest regrets I have is that I never married. I would have liked to have a marriage like my mom and dad had. They were a match made in heaven.

you haven’t managed to catch so much as a goldfish since we got here! Even if I were to believe that you have seen a mermaid — which, frankly, I don’t — how in heaven do you propose to catch the thing?” Dad pulls at his net. “I haven’t got the whole plan figured out yet, have I? I’ve only just seen them. A group of them. Swimming in the deep water. One of them had gold stars shining in her tail. There was a merman too, with long black hair and a shiny silver tail. A merman! For God’s sake, Maureen!” He grips her arm again. “I’m telling the truth! You’ll see I am.” Mom pulls away and turns to me. “Come on, Mandy. Help me get some dinner. I’ve had enough of your father and his daydreams for one afternoon.” I follow Mom as we pick our way through undergrowth, scavenging for food like vagrants.

Again, in 2 Chronicles 7:14 we read, “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.” …we must admit that we need help and release our control (humble ourselves). We must ask our heavenly Dad for help (pray). We must pursue Him (seek His face), and we must abandon our wayward journey in the wrong direction (turn). When we choose to humble ourselves, pray, seek Him and turn from our junk, then God hears, forgives, heals.

longing to suck that bottle of warm, delicious milk. I hadn’t been weaned off it for very long. I couldn’t resist. I pulled the bottle gently out of my brother’s mouth and hands, popped it hastily into my own mouth, lay back on the sofa and enjoyed the trickle of something warm down my throat - something I still enjoy today. Warm milk is heaven for a toddler, a pleasure beyond measure. That was until my younger brother’s legs began shaking, his fists clenched and his breath started puffing away. This was not a good sign. I turned my head to look at him, the bottle still locked in my mouth, when all of a sudden his face turned red and distorted, like he was about to poop. Instead, he let out a high-pitched scream that didn’t quite shatter the front window – though it must have come close – but shattered my eardrums and froze my whole body. Unfortunately for me, it also ignited my mum and dad, who both dropped whatever they had been doing in the kitchen and came running immediately into the living room. ‘What the hell is going on?’ shouted Dad. ‘Brett’s taken Trevor’s bottle,’ shrieked Mum as she ripped it out of my mouth – with my only tooth still stuck in the teat. She shoved it straight back into my brother’s mouth to disable the alarm. ‘He needs a bloody good hiding.’ ‘Little bastard. Get up and come here now!’ bellowed Dad. He yanked me off the sofa and held me dangling in the air by one arm as if he were holding up the biggest fish he ever caught, but with much less pride. My world was spinning and so was I as Dad whacked my petite bottom. I must have blacked out from the pain as I don’t remember anything after that. What I do remember, however, is resenting my little brother for making me lose both my tooth and my taste for dairy products. I also learnt one of life’s important lessons: be very careful what you put in your mouth.

But the worst way to find heaven is to look for it.

he realized what Dad meant when he compared the oil-game to heaven, where many are called and few are chosen.

The foundling charity was flooded with poems, poignant letters and tearful phone calls. One touching note read: ‘I hope you are OK in heaven and dad’ll look after you.’ It was accompanied by a note from the sender’s teacher explaining that the little boy’s father had died on the same day as Diana.

I remember one time, when members of a particular sect of Christian Protestant came to our house on a Sunday afternoon, my father asked them to describe their concept of the kingdom of heaven. A well-groomed man with a Ned Flanders mustache said, sipping some coffee, “Well, sometime in the near future, there will be a great rumbling from above, lightning will strike, and there will be terrible storms. The sky will open up, and down will come Jesus Christ on a cloud with a great trumpet blast. There will be an incredibly beautiful city with gold and silver turrets that descends with angels on it, and this is the kingdom of God. The good Christians will get into the city, and it will float away with Jesus to be with God, the Father, and the rest of the people will be left behind, left on earth to perish.” And then he politely responded with something to the effect of, “What is the Baha’i concept?” My dad, a wise spiritual teacher and public speaker, responded, “Well, in a lot of ways, it’s very similar. There will be great storms and lightning and thunder, and the skies will open up. Down from a hole in the clouds doesn’t come a city or Jesus or anything but rather a bunch of bags of cement. Some shovels and hammers. Bricks and mortar and nails and lumber. And finally, at the very end, a note floats down on the breeze and lands on top of all the supplies. It reads: ‘Kingdom of God on Earth: Build-It-Yourself Kit.

I’d agree with Dad and say there’s no such thing as getting saved on the spot and having assurance of heaven before we die. Not only did it seem prideful to believe in assurance of salvation, but from Paul’s conversations, it sounded like a saved person could live his life any way he wanted and still be accepted by God. Surely he was wrong!

I’ve discovered that the right answer begins with the right question. I’ve also discovered that God is not offended by a sincere question. He won’t satisfy the skeptic and He is not pleased with unbelief, but He loves an honest seeker. Those who lack and ask for wisdom He does not rebuke (see Jas. 1:5). He is a good Dad.

He quoted a verse from Isaiah. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ And then Dad said that God is in the storm. That though the winds blow and my life feels torn apart, if I can just trust Him, I’ll discover Him at the center.

Come on, cowboy up.” ​I followed her past a sad lawn imprisoned behind rusty railings, under an ugly, covered area made sordid by depressing graffiti and bits of disowned garbage, to a steel elevator covered in obscene drawings, which we rode to the seventh floor. On the way up, Dehan pointed at the indelible black and red scrawls on the walls. ​“We inhabit the same space, but we live in different worlds.” ​“That’s deep.” ​“That was my dad. He was deep. I think of him often. He used to say two people can stand in the same place; one of them is in hell and the other in heaven.

Following Jesus doesn’t just mean we get to avoid hell. Following Jesus means we get to be part of experiencing heaven coming to earth today.

The main reason why a daughter needs a dad is to show her that not all the boys are like the ones who hurt her.

Although Genesis didn’t deepen their kiss or steal his own taste, he did lick his own lips, taking the taste of Curtis off his lips and into his mouth. With their lips still barely touching, Genesis murmured, “You are a little bad boy, aren’t you?” Genesis brought his hand up and brushed a lock of hair behind Curtis’ ear. “A very pretty bad boy.” Genesis gave him another soft kiss, and Curtis swore he was in heaven. “You said we’re supposed to be good. You have to stop touching me like that.” Curtis panted. “I don’t know how,” Genesis whispered almost painfully. Leaning back in and kissing Curtis again. “Well, like brother like brother, huh?” Day’s sarcastic voice killed their moment as he sauntered into the room without knocking. “Better pull back, Casanova, ‘my two dads’ are right behind me.” Genesis

And though there’s a lot to be happy about in Heaven, people who were crabby or bossy here don’t seem to become unusually chipper. I’ll never forget when I channeled a woman’s parents, and I got a grumpy vibe from them. I asked the daughter, “Were your parents cranky?” And at the same time that the woman said, “No, my parents were wonderful,” her husband mouthed, “Hell yeah, they were cranky!” Grief can cause us to romanticize the deceased, so I took the husband’s word on this one. In a three-thousand-person venue, Spirit also had me point directly to one guy and say, “You, your father wants you to get up. Is that your mom? He wants her up too. He says you’re a frigging idiot for what you did to the lawn.” Turns out the man had just bought a new ride-on tractor and destroyed an acre of his land because he didn’t know how to work it. Then he told his wife to stop knocking on her son’s door and bothering him so much. Though Dad was doing his thing in Heaven, he still thought of himself as the man of the house.

Another time, the souls of a husband and wife came through to validate their presence to their daughter with a very specific shtick. The dad had me yell, “Bingo!” at which point Mom’s soul said, “They don’t have bingo on TV. It’s The Price Is Right!” The daughter laughed so hard and said that game show was her parents’ favorite. She used to call them when they were alive, and they’d say, “We need to call you back. The Big Deal is on right now!” When the daughter’s son was born, he came into the world right before the Big Deal aired, and the family joked that the baby was the Big Deal of the day. The mom’s soul also had me add that she likes Bob Barker better than Drew Carey as a host. Hey, that certainly wasn’t me talking! I think they’re both great. And though there’s a lot to be happy about in Heaven, people who were crabby or bossy here don’t seem to become unusually chipper. I’ll never forget when I channeled a woman’s parents, and I got a grumpy vibe from them. I asked the daughter, “Were your parents cranky?” And at the same time that the woman said, “No, my parents were wonderful,” her husband mouthed, “Hell yeah, they were cranky!” Grief can cause us to romanticize the deceased, so I took the husband’s word on this one.

To be quite frank, I don't know nor understand how one can stand up and say I'm a 'perfect father'! I reckon myself to be a great dad in my children's eyes and maybe the kids I interact with just by passing by and cracking a few jokes that eventually put a smile on their faces. I call myself a 'great dad' cause my CREATOR chose me to bring an innocent and beautiful life to this world because the Heavens above believed that: 1. I'd never compromise my child's happiness over anything or anyone! 2. I'd do whatever possible, within reason of course to ensure that my son sees LOVE, HOPE, FAITH, HAPPINESS, LAUGHTER, OPULENCE, THE HEAVENS and definitely a FATHER whenever he looks at me or through my eyes! 3. I'm a GREAT-DAD until my children say otherwise.