I KNOW IT'S NOT ENOUGH...

The internet is a crazy thing. You make friends with people you will likely never meet face to face. Of course, you can have really awful experiences with people you never meet face to face (and I've blogged about one of my own already). You only need one of those to become more cautious. But, the reality is that there are a lot of genuine, big-hearted people on here. And this whole blogging thing offers up just enough anonymity for some people to be honest in a way that they wouldn't be otherwise. Me... well, I blog for strangers, friends, and family, so I sometimes land in the soup. But, I read many blogs every day written by people that I have never met, and each day they feel less like strangers, and more like friends. So, when they go through hard times my heart breaks for them.

I am not naive. Well, I am a little naive. Okay, I can be pretty naive. Pretty much anyone could shake me down for my last ten bucks if their sob story was sad enough. I am a want to make things better for people kind of person. I know that about myself. I can be sitting in a pool of my own misery, and if someone else tells me their sad story, I can forget about myself and go to work on fixing their problem. That is good and bad. Sometimes you need to take care of you, and sometimes you need to step outside of your own drama and pay it forward. The thing is that I know that I don't have the words to make it better for a particular online friend who is suffering right now... just the desire. So, we do what we can, even when what we can do is such a small thing.

This is some video footage from one of my favorite TV shows, Joan of Arcadia. Joan talked to God... make that God talked to Joan. And God took on lots of different looks throughout the show. For those of you who have never seen the show, God shows up in the last portion of the clip as a teenage boy.

Before you watch this, go down to the bottom of the page and turn my video player off. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.

MY THEORY ON GOD

A friend posted the question that never gets old: does God exist? This is a tough question, folks, and if you are not an open thinker, I strongly advise you to skip this blog. Come back for something light-hearted and fun. Religion and politics are tough subjects for some people; they have their minds made up and don't want to hear anything else. You know what? I'm okay with that. The deal is I accept what other people believe. I let them have it and don't judge them for it. I figure that they put some thought into what they believe and anything I say won't change it. With that in mind...


I grew up in the United Methodist Church. The first book I bought for myself was on ESP. It never occurred to me that the two were mutually exclusive. I believed in what the Bible said. I also believed in ESP. In the eleventh grade, a good friend of mine loaned me a book by Richard Bach called ILLUSIONS. I think that was the second book that blew my mind. THE OUTSIDERS was the first. Ironically, she was reading it in Sunday School class. That would never have flown at my church. It isn't a long read in terms of time, so I read it repeatedly. Good thing I wasn't still doing the Sunrise Service.

I tried to find something on Wikipedia to adequately explain, in brief, what this book was about. This was the best I got: "Donald Shimoda is one of the two main characters in Illusions. He is a messiah who leaves his job of being a messiah (and also of being a mechanic at a garage) after deciding that people value the showbiz-like performance of miracles and want to be entertained by those miracles more than to understand the message behind them. He meets Richard, a fellow barn-storming pilot and begins to pass on his knowledge to him, even teaching Richard to perform "miracles" of his own." Well, that is sadly lacking. Donald Shimoda has in his glovebox a "Messiah's Handbook" which Richard discovers. Each time he opens it, the message is different. He discovers that the message he gets is the one he most needs. For instance, "Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that."

That right there was enough to blow my mind. WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND YOU IS NOT REALITY. THINK ABOUT THAT. My friend was learning this in Sunday School!!!!

Here's another: "The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change."



And so began the great shift of my life. But, then again, not really. I was already fully capable of holding WHAT OTHER PEOPLE people believed to be mutually exclusive ideas in my head. What I was really doing was expanding, opening, making way for more knowledge. That can be a little scary. So, my senior year of high school I read The Bible. I read the entire Bible, voluntarily, cover to cover, and joined a Bible study group.

I also read every Richard Bach book I could get my hands on. He has written quite a few. He addresses all manner of interesting concepts. ILLUSIONS just picked up where JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL left off and went on to address many philosophical issues. If I had to guess I would say that Mr. Bach believes in God. He believes in a lot of the same stuff I believe in, but we haven't gotten there yet.

In fact, I thought this blog was going to be about this dream I had and then this experience my cousin had, and now I know that I am going to have to write yet ANOTHER blog to get to ALL OF THAT another day.

Instead, I am stuck sharing what I learned from my Bible reading, and what life experience I have thus far. Keep this in mind, I didn't have all of these opinions in the 12th grade, and I have gone back and read some Bible since. I don't like most of The Old Testament. I don't. I don't think most of it makes sense. I think a lot of it is parable or allegory or representational or whatever. I think they are lessons of what you should and shouldn't do. One of the things that I dislike most about The Old Testament is right here: "God's Chosen People." I am apologizing to any Jews who are taking offense right now. That is not an anti-Semitic statement. I don't think God is anti-anybody. I don't think any race, gender, religion, or person with the "right" color of hair has proprietary rights to God. I don't think a person with red hair gets their prayers answered more, faster, or better than someone with blond or brown hair. Wars are fought over this. People have died over this issue dating pre-Christ. This is not a new problem.


Some of the Psalms are really beautiful and some really speak to the sadness that people still feel today. I can get behind that. I like The New Testament better than The Old Testament. I still look at it and think about how long it was between when the events happened and how long before they were put on paper. I know they got some of it wrong. No, I didn't just get struck by lightning. Did you know that all of the disciples wrote a book on Jesus's life? Do you know why that they aren't in The Bible? They were TOO DIFFERENT from the other accounts. John's account is pretty far from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They were stretching it with him. Do you know why they went with Paul's stuff, instead of all the other people who followed Jesus and spanned out to tell the message? Paul went to Rome. Rome was in power. The Pope was in Rome. The Pope decided what got put in The Bible and what didn't. It was pure politics. I know that doesn't please some of you. I wasn't happy when I found it out, either.

Now, let's set all of that aside. The question was, does God exist? Let's say He does. Just go with me. And God sends down "special" people from time to time to try and get humanity on a better track. The Bible calls them prophets, because they seem to "know" things. I would call them psychics today. However, there was all that strife I was talking about before in the OT (bad stuff, wars, slavery, etc), and it wasn't much better when Jesus was born. The Church could have, and should have been, making the lives of its parishioners easier, but it wasn't. It was taxing them to death. People were paying money they didn't have so that they didn't go to hell. It was bad. The Church was using God for profit. I wouldn't have wanted to be the person to upset that apple cart. The Church was Powerful.

So, here's what I think. God sent Jesus here to change how people saw God. The OT painted God as the God of Vengeance, the God of War, Burning Bush, Tower of Babel, Light You on Fire God. That is how the church got away with what they were doing. Jesus was special. Jesus was not only psychic. Jesus could remember what The Other Side looked like. He knew where He came from and where He was going to. He remembered what we forget when we are born. What was special about him was that He didn't forget his life plan. His plan was pretty simple actually. Change the way people see God. He was also not cluttered up with "reality" because he understood "reality" in a way that we don't. The only reason we can't walk on water is because we don't think we can. It's about perception and his was different because his reality was different. He needed that. People saw that as miracles. He needed the miracles to get everyone's attention. He had the power to heal because he believed he could.

He was tapped into something that we all have access to; we just don't know how to get there. We forget. He needed to remember in order to fulfill his purpose. People made his purpose bigger than what it was. They talk about "being saved." I think he probably said that. He wanted to save them from each other. He wanted them to stop fighting. He wanted them to stop claiming God, and using Him to hurt each other. People didn't understand. The one thing that they did get was the part about God being the Father and Jesus saying he was the Son. Do I think he meant he was the Only son? No. He wanted to let them know how God loved them. He loved them like a parent does a child, and not with vengeance. His message was simple. People made it complicated.

So, yeah, I think God does exist. I think he sent Jesus here with full knowledge of The Other Side, and God, and that was how he was able to do all of the amazing things that he did in his lifetime. I don't think that he died to save us from sin. Again, no lightning. I think he died because the church just couldn't have that kind of message going around that "you didn't need to tithe if you didn't have it, and God was a loving Father, instead of a God of Fire." I think that all of those people who die, and talk about seeing the white light or the white tunnel, are on their way to The Other Side. I think that people who talk to people who have already died, just before they die, are actually seeing and talking to their loved ones ~ they are in that in-between place ~ crossing the veil, so to speak ~ and on their way to The Other Side. I believe in a lot more than that, actually, but I have another blog to write. One of the best shows to address the God issue was Joan of Arcadia. I did a little feature of it on my other blog. There are a few clips that are well worth watching. If you are at all interested, you can click here and it will take you to that post. And I will save my dream/cousin story for another day.

Other suggested reading: THE OTHER SIDE AND BACK by Sylvia Browne

THIS ISN'T YOUR USUAL PILLOW TALK

Do you ever have conversations with God? In the middle of the night I started getting this sore throat and I knew I was getting sick. I actually had the good sense to get up and start dosing myself with vitamin C. My father believes high doses of vitamin C at the onset of illness will ward it off. So, I took two or three grams (two or three thousand milligrams) and brought the bottle back to bed, since I was waking up on the hour. When I would fall back to sleep I was having this crazy dream about people returning gifts to me, and I was really ticked about it. It was really nice stuff and they were bringing it back "just because." They had no good reason. They just didn't want it. Who does that? If you don't want it, you regift it. Everyone knows that.

Like I said, I was waking up on the hour and popping a couple of vitamin C. While I was in this in-between state, I was aware of having these conversations with God about this whole crazy gift thing. Unfortunately, I can't remember now precisely what God said. The only thing I do know was that I didn't like it. It was all philosophical and God probably wanted me to be the better person. It was that sort of thing. I didn't want to be the better person. I wanted to drive across town and do some ass kicking. In lieu of that, I wanted to verbally knock someone (actually several people from the amount of gifts I remember from these dreams) into next week.

The last time I woke up, took my vitamin C, and went down again, I could see God talking but couldn't hear a thing. The mouth was moving but the volume was off. And I do remember being able to do some lip reading. Again, I have no memory recall of what was actually said. I think it was because I was still not liking the message. This time I was doing some talking of my own into my pillow. I said something like, "I am really glad that's over. You are really annoying. If you can't say something helpful, You really should just keep it to Yourself."

Did you read that blog I wrote about my mom? If you didn't, it's called THIS ONE'S FOR MOM. (Check that out. It's a link to my old blog. I actually did something techy and it worked. Woohoo. Thanks Patsy. ) Mom and I had issues in my teenage years because Mom was always so right about things. Jesus told us that God is the Father. Our Father. The Father. Everyone's Father. He is the Most Right. It only stands to reason that a person like me is going to find that extremely annoying. The beauty of that is that God understands me better than anyone else. It's called omniscience. Look it up. He's also more forgiving than anyone else.

It's funny. When I started this blog, I really didn't intend to stay stuck in my dream or my interaction with God. It was going to be my segue, that was kind of odd, into something else. Turns out that I think I know what God was saying, even though I still don't actually "remember" it. He was telling me to be more forgiving of those people who are returning my really nice "gifts." After all, He is forgiving of me when I tell Him to buzz off because he is annoying and He's God. Usually, I am the first person to love the metaphor. Today, not so much. But you get what you get.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"
~Gandhi