I was raised Roman Catholic and am a firm believer in the word of God. I also have a creative mind that sometimes roams through the prairies of life and the unknown, to my mom it was daydreaming. She always called me her daydreamer when I was young. As we teach in our classes, the mind works in pictures, so what better way to see things than through vivid daydreams.

So I have struggled for a long time trying to figure out where these two venues were, Heaven and Hell. We have always heard that we ‘look up’ to Heaven and look down to Hell. So is Heaven up above the clouds somewhere? How far out? When we send that rocket to Mars is it closer to Heaven?

How about Hell? I remember when I was a kid it was naught to give someone the ‘thumbs down’ gesture, you were telling them to go to Hell. So we always figured as kids that Hell was a place in the middle of the earth, at least that is what we thought, yours may be different. So if we got a huge auger and started digging to the core of the earth, we will find the fire, but will the devil be there?

When we were little kids, I mean like when I was 4, 5 or 6, we used to go to my grandparents’ cottage in Pinkney, Michigan. At that time, it was in the middle of nowhere and the roads around it were not that great. We would go to church each Sunday and in order to get there, we had to go through Hell, Michigan. This in itself was quite amusing to many, especially my dad, he got a lot of mileage out of the joke that he had to go through Hell every Sunday just to get to church. We learned early on, there was a store in a Hell, there was even a dam in Hell, we never met a devil though.

So here I offer another thought of Heaven and Hell, Those two places that get so much publicity, yet nobody has ever come back to tell us what the accommodations are like. I even went to Trip Adviser and there was not a single review on either of the places. In my estimation, there is a Heaven and Hell and it is what you leave in the minds of the people after we pass. If people think fondly of you, if you left a good spirit in the minds and hearts of those you leave behind, you are in Heaven to them. If you were a person that lacked social skills or if the deeds you did on the earth are in a way that people condemn you, well for them, you rest in Hell.

It is true that some of us could live in both in peoples minds. That for some of those we leave behind we might be a saint and for others that did not like us, it could be that fiery place of damnation. Some people I believe bat 100% on either side. Mother Theresa is probably pretty close to a perfect entrance to Heaven. Charles Manson on the other hand probably gets a perfect entrance to Hell. That is the way they left us with what is in our minds.

So my conclusion is that H&H are not places we necessarily travel too, they are places we leave to the people we leave behind. That causes me great joy because I know that I can change, repent for my sins and do it more than just with a person of the cloth…it must be done with everyone you know. To live your life in a manner that lifts up others and makes amends for some of the negative chapters of your life. We all can do that, and we all can make a difference in someone’s life.