Welcome, ven a gozar!

I was invited to go to church last Sunday. It was a denomination and service I had never attended before, so how could I refuse? I have in the past managed to scare away the missionaries that would arrive at my front door to recruit me some time ago. The last pair, were two young men from the closest Mormon Church group. After fifteen to twenty minutes of talking and discussing, they were getting concerned about there own belief system and left with a promise that they would have some of their Elders come and speak with me. I thanked them and said I welcomed the future conversation. That was about seven months ago and I am still waiting….

I am always surprised about the groups of people who all feel they have the real version of Christianity and everyone else is peddling something that looks real, but does not quite get you through the golden gates into the promised land - whatever that may turn out to be.

In the past when the world was much larger, it was not unusual for a Town, City, Province, or even Country to be one religion. That was the way it was. The rulers ruled and the rest followed, or were put to death, or if they were lucky banished, which was about the same fate.

As the world became a smaller place, religion lost its iron clad grip little by little on people over the world. People were starting to think and have opinions and for the first time in history were not killed for disagreeing or having an alternative view about some facet of their religion.

Of course the fundamentalists never went away, they were always there pointing out the wrongs in any new thinking that flowed into town on the lips of travelers. Because the pen is mightier than the sword, some of those ideas took root, and people changed their thinking just a little bit about how religion should be. So here we are now, with more versions of Christianity in the world than most towns have residents.

Who is to say who is right and who is wrong. If you pretend for a moment to be looking at the earth from space, it is as we see in pictures, just a little blue and white marble surrounded by a sea of emptiness. It should become obvious when immersed in the view that we are all one, and connected to each other and everything contained on this little blue and white marble floating in space. It is also a little hard to find any supreme being when looking at earth from space.

Unless that is you take time to consider how exact and perfect everything about our earth has to be in order for life to survive and thrive. Or while gazing you think that we are really only a few hundred years from the way people on earth lived for possible millions of years, and how ignorant we really are. For all our modern knowledge there is so little we really can do. Then a Godhead becomes apparent to us, but the whys and wherefores are still a little hazy at best, with humans not much more advanced than an ant hill or beehive.

Back to the Sunday service I attended. It was focused, and fun. There was singing, music, a short skit, prayer and celebration. I found that what I watched unfold in front of me sitting as a visitor fit well with my beliefs. Of course I noticed some differences from other services I have attended over the years, no surprise there. All in all it was fun and I enjoyed the experience more than I have some other services I have attended. Try it out some time, if for no other reason than to validate your own religious beliefs.

I like most of the world have been watching the devastation resulting from the recent earthquake in China. It is a terrible tragedy. As of this mornings news, they are expecting the death toll to pass thirty thousand people! Having lived in a town of thirty thousand people I can imagine that number of people, but I can not imagine that number of people ceasing to exist in a little more than a blink of an eye.

From a more distant view I wonder if we, as in those of us living in highly developed nations contribute to catastrophes such as happened in this recent earthquake. There have been books written, and movies made for a number of years about living in a way that sustains a reasonable population, where barring a global tragedy we would never see numbers this high ever again.

Due to our technology, every year we squeeze ever more out of each acre of farm and ranch land, leading to huge excess of crops which we then ship to countries that are not so fortunate. While our intent is good, we have helped to create populations of people in various pockets around the world that is far denser than the land can support without our help. Because those pockets of people are better fed than any time in history, these pockets of people procreate faster, and sustain a larger population than at any time in history.

Because we have such an excess of grain that we both export and give away, we are in part responsible for this devastation. As hard as it is to imagine thirty thousand people dead as a result of an earthquake in China, it really is just a ripple in a country with the world’s largest population. As soon as the worst is over, new families will be moving into those areas, risking their lives to have the opportunity of a better future.

There is a book, The Story of B, which explains what we are doing better than I could explain it. I will try to convey an thought form the book in a condensed version: If you have a cage with two rats and they have access to fifty pounds of food a week, they will multiply until they have reached a population equal to the food supply. If you increase the food supply the population increases to meet the change. If you slowly cut back on the food supply, the population slowly shrinks to the new reduced food supply.

We are the story of B in human form. We have provided food over a few generations that allows some parts of the world to have a population that far exceeds the number that should be present. By default starvation is on a larger scale than ever before. Our grain and meat choices are shrinking in variety as science has become involved in genetic manipulation to further increase yield beyond what we can do on our own. I read that most of our wheat is produced from less than six different varieties. A little more manipulation and that number could be reduced to three, or maybe even one. What happens when that number is reached, and some long dormant bacteria arrives and ruins the world’s excess wheat crop, and/or meat surplus?

I have concerns that thirty thousand dead in China, and a thirty percent death rate during the Bubonic Plague of the Middle Age’s may look like small potatoes…or no potatoes if you were alive during the Irish potato famine. During times like this when I contemplate thirty thousand dead men, women, and children due to an earthquake, I have to wonder if we as a people have compassion or profit as a motivator for feeding the worlds hungry?

When I was a young boy I used to wonder about old people and what their purpose was. It did not seem to me that old people had much of a purpose. They didn’t work, they seemed not to spend much money, they did not seem to like new things, and they seemed to use too much electricity and heat in the winter time. Of course being a little kid, there was a lot of the world I did not understand and I only had my limited experience to base my thinking on. Fortunately I grew out of that mind set, but a few others around the world have not.

I see old people in a whole new light, that was not possible when I was a boy. There is a (now) old book, Lord of The Flies, written by Nobel Prize winning author William Golding, about (cough) children ruling the world. The book takes place on a deserted island, where a group of boys try to govern themselves without much good coming out of the process.

A second book which had a great impact on my thinking was Animal Farm, written by George Orwell which addresses social issues using animals on a farm, and how a system of government becomes twisted to meet the needs of a few, to the detriment of the many. Both of these books are worth while reads for anyone who is dissatisfied with the way a democratic government governs itself.

Other people had to resolve issues that I did not have. For example, people who can not function in society for any number of reasons. I used to hear what I thought at one time were very conservative people sagely stating prisoners and other ‘faulty’ human beings should done away with, as they serve no purpose. I came to realize that these utterances come from people who either never had the opportunity for an education, could not complete their education, or spend their lives living in fear, and everyone not like them is the enemy.

The litany of faults goes on and on for these people, it covers the gamut of skin color to belief systems. People who think this way miss is we are all one. There is no you over there, and me sitting here. Anytime anyone starts to think that they are an individual and everyone else is distinct from them, go outside at night and observe the stars. The Milky Way itself is stunning here in the southwest when traveling away from the city, I wish everyone could view the Milky Way as I can!

When looking at the Milky Way, it becomes apparent how we are just one little pin point of light among uncountable points of light. When looked at from that perspective, it is easy to see that every thing on our little speck of a planet is one, none of us are separate from everyone else.

Because we are all one, everyone of us that takes a breath should be important to all of us. Those old people I used to wonder about are old and out and about because they spent their lives working for that right. They were also lucky enough not to suffer any illness of a magnitude that it cut their life short. They are also our ancestor memory so to speak. The world is changing so fast, and now appears to be changing in a different direction. We need their memories of how things were done in their day, and the days of their parents.  Some things in their lives that they dealt with daily would be major problems in our pampered lifestyle of today.

All of us do battle with our own personal demons. Most of us manage if not to get the upper hand, to at least keep them under control. A few of us struggle with them on a daily basis, and fewer still lose the battle and become lost in their own personal hell. No one seems to share the same sets of personal demons in their lives, some may share problem, but most of us have our own unique total set of problems in our life that we struggle with almost every day.

We also are not very understanding of other people’s battles with personal demons that torment them. For example, it is hard for a woman with a model’s figure to have anyone take her serious when she says she battles constant cravings for chocolate cake, or candy bars. In the same light, it is hard for someone in a bar downing their third bottle of beer, to find someone to feel sorry for them when they say they can not control their drinking.

I find it odd that we are so quick to judge others for not being able to control those desires that attempt to run their lives, but we expect to the world to rally behind us and help us with our daily struggles. The irony of this thinking is it is almost like Moses parting a  Sea of desire, but with unhealthy desires on one side of the dry land pathway, and our own demon driven desires on the other. We tend to rationalize our desires and cravings as being more serious than the cravings and desires of others.

I imagine if we looked deep into our self, we would find that we have passions and wants that drive us just as hard, but they are what most people see as healthy desires. Because they are seen as healthy, we give into them easily, and do not spend a lot of time thinking about how hard it would be not to give into them.

The gauge we use as a serious meter for fighting with our own personal demons is rather weighted also. For example pretend there is an addiction group of some type meeting in a room right now. It is a non specific addiction group, and open to anyone with an addiction. There may be several different people with as many addictions or personal demons present. One person may be at the far end of a serious drug addiction, another may have root beer flavored hard candy addiction, one may be a porn addict, and a fourth may have an eating problem. They all would be there battling their own personal demons of addiction, but with ourselves looking in from the outside, would be quick to rate and judge the degree of seriousness of each persons separate addiction.

Generally we would rate the drug addict as the most serious person in need, and the root beer hard candy eater as something trivial and probably not to be taken seriously. We do this because we rarely judge someone’s addiction on the level of pain it is causing in a life. Rather we rate the seriousness of an addiction on how it affects a person’s life, health and well being. Yet in reality, all the people in the group are suffering in their own hell, all with about the same level of torment in their day to day lives.

Of course when we get right down to comparing addiction or personal demons that torment our daily lives, almost no one has an addictions are as serious as our own. Other people suffering from their addictions can stop them any time they wish. Our personal demons on the other hand are more serious and take much more effort to control.

If only life really worked like that…we would have a handful of people with serious problems caused by their addictions, and it would be much easier to focus attention on those few people. In the mean time, I am going to continue struggling with the demons my life that haunt me because they are much more serious than everyone else’s. If you do not think my personal addictions are more serious than those of others, just ask. Of course anyone else with the same answer is probably lying….

Usually I enjoy talking to people. I talk to people in line at the grocery store. I talk to the people that check me out at the cash register. I talk to the people who are making my lunch if I can. I talk with the people out walking if I walk up to them, I like to share a few minutes with them chatting about the walk, and what else they do for exercise.

It is getting harder though. We are so wrapped up in fear of another human being, it amazes me sometimes how scared some people get from the idea of talking to a stranger! When I was a kid, it was Nakita Khrushchev, and the nuclear bomb or missile dropping on our home or school. They used to show him at commercial time during the family hours television. The commercial would be a upper body shot with Mr. Khrushchev telling me, he was going to bury us. It certainly caused me to have some worries, and I took the drills at school more serious when we went to the gym, or took cover under our desks.

I remember most of the grownups were worried too. Adults took the threat seriously too. I felt a little safer because we lived close to an Air Base, and they were tied into the early warning system of the time, and they had planes to help defend us. Some people had bomb shelters built on their property. Other people remodeled their root cellars to take on a more shelter like function. I could not imagine spending more than a day or two in one, but at the time they thought they may be in their shelter for weeks to months. I am not sure what they thought they would climb into when they left their shelter, but there were some definite concerns that it could happen.
 
Later the threat changed to communism in Vietnam. The older people were very concerned that the communists would be right in our town if we didn’t stop them in Vietnam like we did in Korea. More fear, but it was a distant fear of something we at home could not really quantify. We knew it was out there, but our individual lives had changed little.
 
Somewhere along the proceeding years, thanks in part to technology, our fear shifted once again. This is our biggest and vaguest fear. We have this now almost ingrained fear of anyone we do not know. We find it hard to talk to neighbors, and other people we interact with only occasionally. Once we get outside our group of friends, our world becomes a cold, hostile, dangerous place.
 
Our world has become filled with sexual deviants of a criminal nature. Many women walking by a strange man alone somewhere almost have panic attacks on the spot. Men and too a lesser extent women are extremely cautious even about dating because the person who has an interest in us is probably a stalker, or a psychopath waiting to enter our lives and wait for us to let our guard down. It is not uncommon these days for a paid search to be ran on a perspective date before committing to a cup of coffee at a local coffee house.
 
Now, on top of that we have the fear of terrorist activity happening in our town. I have heard people from a few very small town express fear that they feel too vulnerable. Too many people in general are scared to talk to strangers any more. If they aren’t a sexual deviant they may be a terrorist. If they are not a deviant, or a terrorist, they are probably looking for someone to stalk. Now Global warming has appeared on the horizon, if our current fears are not enough.
 
This individual isolationism needs to stop. We are growing a second generation of children who do not have the tool required to make their way in a world of face to face interaction and communication. The new generation is so hardwired into electronic communication, some can not carry on simple conversations in a face to face meeting of two people. How can we, with our children so isolated expect them to some day, leave home, go out and find a job, and be successful when they have been told all their lives not to talk to strangers?

For a few years now, I had been a paper napkin magnet. I do not know the reason, but I have not had to buy napkins at home unless there was need for napkins that did not have a company logo on them. I was not actively seeking napkins, they just seemed to be seeking me. I would go to the borg drive through, and in my bag of greasy food would be ten or more napkins, any drive though.

I always had too many napkins in my pockets too, much ot my dismay when I washed clothes. I would find my clothes covered with broken down napkin bits. Sometimes the dryer took care of them, other times I would find myself picking off the pell’s that developed on some of my clothes. Some times there would be so many napkins in the house, the napkin holder would no longer hold them, and I would have to find a spot to stash some. Need t blow your nose, here is a napkin.

That seems to have slowed over the last few weeks. I find myself reaching into my pockets twice this week, and to my surprise, there were no napkins in my pocket. What is the world coming too - no napkins?

So okay, napkins come and napkins go, but about the same time napkins started becoming scarce, small hand sized balls have taken their place! It started innocently enough two weeks ago. There was a used tennis ball laying in the front yard. It looked like it belonged to a dog before I found it. I picked it up and bounced it about four miles as I walked. I didn’t think anything of it, except it was something else to do while walking.

I bounced that ball around for about three days then as I walked by a yard with a big dog in it, I tossed it over the fence so the dog would have a toy to play with, if it wanted to. The next day when I went out walking, what was along the path? Another ball… This one was multicolored and hard, like the super balls of old. I bounced that around for a few days and dropped it by the sidewalk where I know some small kids live.

The next day I as I walked around the walking path, there was another tennis ball. So I picked it up and bounced it around for a while. A few days later I gave it to a god owner. Two days ago, I step outside and there is another hard rubber multi colored ball right by where I was leaving the other balls!

I am all for coincidence, but these balls all of a sudden have taken on a life of their own. It reminds of an old movie where the boy is dying, and him and hias father add gas to the neighbors car every night. After a few months they start siphoning gas out. The neighbor of course was at first amazed, and later, shocked. I can’t imagine anyone leaving balls out for me to pick up though, it just sounds too silly.

I am also finding coins all of a sudden laying around the walking path. At first I thought it too was a coincidence, but I have rarely found as much as a dime in years of walking and now in just a few weeks I have surpassed my coin finding record for a year.

Maybe I am drawing these things too me somehow, and I do not realize it? Maybe it is all a number of random things that appear to be happening all at once? Or maybe it s something else going on? I do not really have any idea, but I find it rather interesting, and a little fun too.

I have always wondered about programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Well not really about them, but how they work for so many people with serious addiction. I have never had any dealings with them, but I was a smoker many years ago, so I have some insight to the issues at hand for someone who does have need of such a program.

What I do not understand is it appears the program is based on something outside of a person. The idea that addiction is not something I do, but something I can not control and need help with, is the way I understand the program foundation. I am sure I am not the first person to question this concept, but it does seem odd to me. If there were a smoker’s anonymous I would not have shown up at the first meeting and told the group that I can not control my smoking addiction? If I could not control my smoking then logic makes me think I would still be smoking today?

After all how can I not control something, and yet be able to quit when it becomes less important than something else? If I was helplessly addicted to smoking, then I would still be a smoker, or be an almost dead smoker from one of the many smoking diseases. In my case I replaced smoking with something more important to me. That something was not becoming one of the people almost dead from a smoking disease.

If there had been a smokers anonymous, I fail to see what I would have gained joining the group? What kind of mind trick is it to be addicted to something that I can not stop on my own and expect someone else to do it for me? Perhaps it is a need that an Anonymous program solves to mend the reason that causes the abuse? Perhaps the real need is to have another person(s) intervene in someone’s behalf that helps them change their behavior?

I really do not know, and I am projecting possibilities of how these programs work. For myself, it seems I continue a behavior until that behavior is no longer important. I relate it to being young, and lonely. How lonely does a person have to be before they accept that maybe they are responsible for their loneliness? If no one knows you are alive, you can not expect someone to find you, and want to hang out with you, or you with them.

My greatest respect to you if you are in one of these programs and it is working for you. More respect for the people who keep the meetings going who were once walking through the doors for the first time themselves. I know I could not spend several hours a week hanging around with smokers, and not take up smoking again myself and become addicted again. It takes some special internal fortitude. How does one be intimate and distant at the same time in these meetings? Perhaps in the anonymous process people find a new kind of courage, or determination that helps them maintain distance while at the same time being close, and able to make real change in helping someone with their addiction.

I have found in my life that bad habits I had were only around until they were replaced by something that I wanted more. Maybe that is the key to why the programs work? People wake up one day so desperate that they want release more than anything else? They look around and the only hand being held out for them is an Anonymous hand, and they take it, because they can’t go through another day living like they are. Then perhaps through the strength of that anonymous hand they conquer their addiction.

Good people all of them. If these good people did not exist, we would have one less measure of how truly wonderful our lives are. Because we can use these people as a measuring stick of how good our lives truly are, we can also see the amazing miracle the people running anonymous meetings really are. I hope I measure up, at least to the length their shadows on a noon day.

I had an interesting thought today. I was thinking about growing from a baby to a young child. I have never seen truly happy babies during this stage of life. Most days are filled with frustrations of things they can not do yet. Most of the frustration is usually because their minds start to envision things their bodies do not know how to do yet.

From thinking about babies and the frustration they go through because their wants advances their abilities, that we in the end of our lives suffer from our bodies advancing our thinking! We do not remember the frustrations we lived through from about six months to three or four years old when we wanted to do something, but we could not, because we had not developed our fine motor skills yet.

Our diets change too as the years go by. One day we are walking along and it is lunch time. We think we want pizza for lunch. Our favorite pizza, the same combination we have been eating for at least twenty years now. We order, receive, and start to eat our favorite pizza. Suddenly it does not taste as satisfying as it did just last week when we treated ourselves to a slice of pizza.

Even our thinking changes in our later years. I can not speak for women, but for men, sex is the main brain topic from waking to sleeping, and maybe during sleep too. Men go through their lives talking with women in every conceivable circumstance, yet in their minds they are usually thinking about sex with the women of interest at the moment. It is just the way men are built. Suddenly one day a man realizes he is talking with a woman and something is different! It takes a few seconds, but he realizes that for the first time in his adolescent to adult life, he sees the woman in front of him as a person, not as a possible sex object.

Some parts of getting old are not so interesting or benign. For some of us little things we took for granted such as proper body function now quit working in the most humiliating, or embarrassing ways. We become incontinent. We become a gas factory that could probably supply the Country’s methane gas needs daily. We have trouble digesting foods that we used to love, or certain foods now give us a stomach ache.
 
When we think we can not take any more, the real diseases set in. We have high blood pressure, heart trouble, eye problems, back problems, pains and aches that come and go and sometimes come and decide to stay.

Most people of course do not find this time of life too enjoyable. How can they with their bodies falling apart? I am starting to wonder though how can we not enjoy this time of ending? Our bodies have given us great service for so many years, and they are now getting tired. Our bodies are now taking control of the end of our lives, and no matter what we would like to do about it, what we can do is mostly limited to observation.
 
Our trouble is we can not just observe, we have to observe with opinion and emotion. I think we need to become more proactive and observe with happiness, and contentment, possibly even enjoyment. We may not be able to control getting old and dying, but we can control how we react to it.

We can choose how what emotions we allow into our lives as our bodies start to do what is natural after so many years of life. I hope for myself at least I can find enjoyment in the way my body shuts itself down. I can not do anything about it, and I enjoyed my body at its best, so the least I can do is enjoy the idea, it is doing what it thinks is best for me.

In essence, I can enjoy and appreciate that my body is doing the best it can with the every day more limited resources it has to work with. This seems more natural to me, and much better than being bitter and resentful that my body which served me so well, is now shutting itself down because it has no more to give.

It is not hard to imagine how story’s of Werewolves and other monsters started. It does not take much imagination at all if you think about the conditions people lived under in the dark or middle ages, which was the time of Feudalism in Europe. Everything outside whatever domain the person in charge could control was foreign territory. To leave your little patch of safety was very dangerous. Not that your little patch of safety was all that safe to start with. Think back now hundreds of years ago when you were alive….

Everyone wore the same clothes every day, and they were filthy rags for the most part. Everyone was hungry, uneducated, overworked, overtaxed, and had no education. Churches and the Landowners ruled the land. Churches told you what to think and landowners made sure you were too poor to be a threat to them.

At night there was no light except from a fire. The only time you could see far at night was when the moon was out. But if the moon was out for you, the moon was out for everyone else too. There were people about who were not normal, they were probably possessed by the way they acted, hearing voices, seeing things, and very anti social. There were no medications, no drugs to help them be normal. Deformed and crazy people were the norm, there was nothing to be done for them, except take care of them.

In your lifetime already you have seen or heard of people who have been found dead from leaving their hovels in the night. They had been attacked, horribly mutilated, maybe found with parts missing. There was also no way to solve a murder unless someone confessed or left such obvious evidence at the murder scene, but even murderers were not that stupid to leave obvious evidence. It must have been a Werewolf or some other monster that attacked them. That is the only explanation that makes sense. After all the idea of serial killers was unknown back then and these murders had to be explained somehow. Your mind can not comprehend anyone killing another person in your village.

Now you know the secret of the Werewolf. You hate your neighbor for some reason. You wait until the moon is full and you can see at night. You take your ax, shovel, or whatever you have for a weapon, and you wait where you know he or she goes to relieve themselves at night. When they show up to do their business, you are waiting. By the time you have calmed down enough to realize what you did, the victim is a mangled mess. You clean your weapon in the grass or dirt, wash the blood off your arms and face, and go back to bed, hoping no one noticed you were up and about.

In the morning, the body is found. It must have been a Werewolf, or monster that attacked because of the moon. A week later, the story is so accepted in your village, you are starting to believe it yourself. Maybe in your lifetime if the village is large enough and you are sick enough, three or four people have been found dead, and mutilated? No one would suspect you of such a terrible crime, so unless you do something stupid, your secret is safe.

There were no serial killers back then. People did not have a concept of a serial killer. There were Werewolves, Demons who controlled and took over people, and other assorted monsters, who were more than capable of such acts. If you dismiss them, there were witches, and warlocks, and wizards who everyone knew killed people and ate them. There are as we know, no shortage of stories of twisted things that roamed the earth at night capable of killing innocent people. But no one you knew back then could possibly do something that sickening to someone you knew…except maybe the castle torturer, or wild dogs or pigs, or….

If you need more convincing, watch the news the next time some sadistic murderer is arrested. Does he look normal, or does he look like a Werewolf? Maybe he lost his magic?