Outside the Box

Outside the Box

  An expression I’ve always hated is, “You have to think outside the box.” What box? I always ask. I don’t see any freaking boxes. Who put the box over my head? Is it a big box, a little box, made from cardboard, or aluminum foil? No wait, I put that one there. Anyway, are you just referring to my skull? If so, I don’t quite relish the idea of thinking outside of it. Maybe when I’m dead I’ll give that a try. Until then don’t tell me about some imaginary box. The only limitation to my own thinking that I freely admit to is the one set up by the Big Engineer in the sky who designed my brain and the Universe He tossed it into in the first place. And, as far as He’s concerned, the only limitation is my own imagination. And boy did I get blessed with a big one of those. I wish I could say the same about everything else I was blessed with, but I digress. Anyway, back to the hated expression. I realize that sometimes we get caught up in endeavors involving routines and often are guilty of tunnel vision. We don’t see the forest for the trees – another expression I have a beef with – I mean come on, if you see “trees” plural, you’re obviously looking at the forest. Now if you said someone couldn’t see the forest for the tree that would make more sense.

   So you’re working on this project and giving it your all, when in walks this smarty pants boss and tells you that you and your team need to start thinking outside the box. My first thought outside that box is, “He/She don’t know me very well, does He/She?”  You couldn’t even find most of my thoughts on a radar screen – a very big radar screen. And Mr. or Ms. Smarty Pants wouldn’t even want to see some of those outside the box thoughts I’m having right now. For instance, where’s your out of the box ideas Mr./Ms. Smarty Pants? Is your only function to crack the proverbial whip or pound the drum beat for us lowly rowers? And if that’s how you see the situation, why would you even be expecting us lowlife rowers to be thinking at all inside or outside the box? Isn’t that a little above our pay grade? I mean as long as the stupid boat is moving, we’re doing our job. So what you’re really saying is, “Hey, you need to be a little more creative here.” Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I can do creative. In fact my creative might be so creative it is likely to give you, Mr/Ms Smarty Pants, some very uncharacteristically creative nightmares. You might come to regret what you wished for.

  So bottom line, If you think I’m thinking inside a box at any point, just let me know. And I’ll show you thoughts that will rip said box to shreds like a hand grenade going off inside a paper bag. Thoughts will go flying around the room and splatter against the walls. You might want to not wear your best footwear that day either because there will be some landing on your shoes. And I won’t guarantee they will ever come clean again. It could get messy. Fortunately for me, the only Smarty Pants I answer to anymore, is my own self. I do like it better that way. When I get all crazy in my thinking nowadays, nobody else has to get hurt. So if you accidentally blundered into this, just back away slowly from the guy with the crazy ideas wearing the tinfoil hat and no box in sight. Then turn and run like hell.

Tilting At Windmills

Tilting At Windmills

  One of my all-time favorite heroes is Don Quijote; a man after my own imagination. I read this story when I was still in school. I often go back and re-read portions of it. I was doing just that this morning. There are good lessons for dealing with life sprinkled generously throughout. Below is my favorite scene from this story. With our brave Don Quijote on his proud steed, Rocinante, with lance in hand preparing to battle giants…

  “This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures.” 

  Obviously indeed. My life has not been a hotbed of adventures. There have been some, but they were few and far between. But in my head, they come regularly like marching bands in a Thanksgiving’s Day parade. Which in itself can be satisfying enough. But life, at least mine anyway, does not often afford us the opportunity to defend our honor or test our mettle in “nobel, righteous warfare”. As I’ve written before, I often asked myself, that if I were to find myself in such a test, would I be as brave as Don Quijote? The few times I was tested, the answer was a resounding yes. I knew I had the mettle. All I lacked was the appropriate adventure. Like Don Quijote, when the adventures have been lacking in the real world, I’m pretty good at conjuring them up in the not so real world. It has sufficed. Now that I’ve more years under my belt, it’s all I could manage anyhow…at least I’m honest enough to admit it.

  It has been my experience that there are far too many Sancho’s in the world, though; those that see only windmills where you and I see giants. My father is a Sancho. He does not even entertain the notion of fantasy, fiction, or make believe. To him, there is no value in it. He refuses to even watch a movie that is something other than what he thinks is possible or a retelling of actual events. All else is just silly nonsense. He would never even consider reading one of my books. His attention to detail and sticking to the facts, I guess, made him a really good detective. And the world needs the likes of him. I guess that’s why there are so many of them around. It would be a very sad and dreary place, however, if we ever pushed aside the Don Quijotes and made the world unsafe for them to inhabit. So, if you have a child that often talks to their toys and creates imaginary worlds and friends, smile and encourage them like my mother did me. Or better yet, join them. You’re never too old to have adventures, or keep the world safe from evil giants. 

Don't let this happen.

Note to Future Me

Note to Future Me

  

I just read an article that completely blows my mind (yes, I’m an old hippie and sometimes revert to using phrases from that era). Anyway, the article dealt with this new quantum physics concept called entanglement. If you haven’t read anything about this concept, I suggest you google it and do a little reading up on it. It will blow your mind too. Anyway, here is an excerpt from the article I was reading this morning:

Dean Radin, the author of two groundbreaking books on controlled paranormal experiments, The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds, spoke at a January conference, Electric Universe, in New Mexico. He described his recent pilot study on time and precognition. A small group of advanced meditators who use the “non-dual” technique, were tested. While meditating, they were subjected to random interruptions: a flash of light and a beeping sound. Measuring their brain activity, Radin found that significant brain changes occurred BEFORE the light flashes or the beeps. A control group of non-meditators were tested in exactly the same way, but their brain measurements revealed NO such changes. In other words, the brains of the meditators anticipated the timing of the unpredictable interruptions. The future was registering now. This, of course, opens up another way of thinking about time. Serial time, the idea that, in this continuum, we experience a smooth progression of moments, with the present becoming, so to speak, the future, is the conventional view. But suppose that is a grossly limiting and sketchy premise? Suppose that, for those who can be aware of it, the future is bleeding into the present? It is making an impact “before it happens.”

  Okay, with that said, I’m flashing back to scenes from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” where Bill says “Note to Future Self, put keys to handcuffs in this drawer.” And then when he opens the drawer, voila! – there’s the keys that his future self used his time travelling ability and went back and placed there for him. We all have had flashes of things or thoughts that then seem to happen. Like you’ll be driving down the road and think about a song, and then it is the very next song that plays on the radio. Coincidence? Maybe not according to this study. That song on the radio thingy happens to me all the time. (Maybe because I do tend to get in a pretty deep meditative state when doing something as patently boring as driving down the freeway). Or you’ll be with someone and they say something like, I think we should go out to eat at such and such restaurant tonight, and you were just sitting there thinking the exact same thing. That happens between my darling, sweet wife and I occasionally. Or I will pick up the phone to call her, and it rings as soon as I pick it up and it’s her calling me. That happens every now and then too. Our minds seem to be pretty entangled whether the rest of us is or not. So is there something to all of that above and beyond the coincidental, random, chance occurrences?  According to this study, the answer is a big fat yes.

  So, note to future me…If some writer out there in your time writes a great story that ends up on the number one best seller list, meditate really hard about it and send the idea back to me in the present (your past) so I can beat them to the punch. Would that be plagiarism? Not if my copyright gets on the story first. Ha! 

Romance in the Air

Romance in the Air

Someone once told me that I wasn’t the most romantic guy on the planet. That’s not exactly Earth shaking news, even to me. I think paying almost a hundred bucks for flowers is totally ridiculous, even though I’ve done it a few times before.  Besides, I have a daughter and daughter-in-law that are in the Florists business so it helps them out. I’ve never spent a bunch of money to take my special someone to a fancy French Restaurant, and I’ve often forgotten my anniversary. In fact my wife and I were married for five years (this time around) before we remembered to celebrate our anniversary at all. Yes, she’s not much better than I am when it comes to the romantic department. Lucky for me right? To me, being snuggled up with my Sweetie on the sofa watching TV is just about romantic enough. Especially if she lets me have control of the remote. So here we go with Valentine’s Day. I always ask myself the same question every year. I ask, “Self, who dreamed up this hokum so-called Valentine’s Day thingy anyway? I bet it was those pansies that work at Hallmark. What you say we go over there and bruise them up just a little for putting all this extra, and totally unnecessary, pressure on men the world over. That, and Christmas shopping, is why we men have so many heart attacks in the first place. Stress, pressure, and the occasional brow beating we take for our lack of enthusiasm over the whole thing is enough to cause even the stoutest of hearts to go into cardiac arrest after a while.

  So anyway, this year, I decided that this question was getting tired of being rhetorical, so I looked it up. Yep, I googled it. Did you know that the Catholic Church recognizes three different St. Valentines?  All of whom were martyred. Hmm, that’s not too surprising considering. Gee, I wonder what they did to piss guys off enough to get them killed.  One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Other stories about this infamous trouble maker claimed that when imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first "valentine" greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl--possibly his jailor's daughter--who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed "From your Valentine," an expression that is still in use today. Well it’s too late to do anything about that guy, but I’m still thinking that those Hallmark fools need a good beating for taking something so innocent and turning it into a money making torture machine. Another custom that occurred annually in Roman times in the middle of February was all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with the woman whose name he chose. These matches often ended in marriage. Why that part of it didn’t catch on, I don’t know. Might have been a blessing if you were a big, dumb, ugly guy that couldn’t get a date. Hey, why you looking at me like that?

  Anyway, I once took my special someone’s word as being serious when she said I didn’t need to get her anything for Valentine’s Day because she wasn’t getting me anything. We were only dating at the time, so I didn’t know her well enough to know better.  When I showed up that evening empty handed…well let’s just say this is a cautionary tale for all you un-romantic guys out there. Don’t you do it! You better have at least a card in your hand when you come in that door or you will live to regret it! Starting immediately. Not one who likes seeing my loved one in tears after she got through yelling at me like I was the lowest dog on the planet, I had to think fast. I went back home and took a small carved wooden box I had and placed  four cut out pieces of colored paper in it. The first piece was a cut out of a person (at least as best as I could draw one). The second piece was a red heart. The third piece was a picture of a ghost. And the last was a picture of a pot of gold. I also penned a note and placed it on top. The note said, “In this box are my most precious possessions. I’m entrusting them completely to your care from this day forward. The picture of a man represents my body. The red heart represents my heart and my love for you. The ghost represents my soul. And I don’t have much money, but what I have is yours. As long as you cherish this box and its contents all my money, my heart, my body, and my soul are yours and no others. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  I went from zero to hero in a matter of a couple of hours. So, guys, if you’re under a lot of pressure and don’t know what to give your special someone for Valentine’s Day, you might want to try this. I promise I won’t tell her where you got the idea.

This Valentine is for all the beautiful ladies in my life...if you're a lady and you at least know my name, that qualifies you as a beautiful lady that is in my life, so this heart is for you. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

When I'm 64

                                            When I’m 64

  Well, that day is today. When I was a kid, I had a hard time imagining being 64 or anything over 50 for that matter. I was sure I really didn’t want to ever see 64 roll around and figured I would probably do something stupid to end it all way before then anyhow. And trust me, I did plenty of stupid in my younger days. For instance, I went surfing once when a hurricane was approaching the gulf coast and got slammed by my own surfboard in the forehead in plenty deep enough water to drown in if it had knocked me out. Fortunately, I have a very hard head. The resulting cut on my forehead required twenty seven stitches. And on the way back from the hospital in Galveston, my buddies were complaining because we had missed the best waves we had ever seen in the gulf, so we stopped again and went surfing for the rest of the day. Yep, I was out there with a big bandage on my head covering twenty seven stitches and risking my life once again. This is Texas after all, and we’re famous for getting back on the horse that throws us, even if it is stupid to do so. Not too long after that, I joined Uncle Sam’s Army for four years. It was during the height of the Viet Nam war, so I had little doubt I would get sent there and that would be the end of it for me. Fate intervened, and I was sent to the Republic of Panama instead. A little less dangerous than Viet Nam in that there wasn’t an active war going on, but still, it had its risks which I also managed to survive. But I had been so relieved to be sent to Panama instead of Viet Nam, that I started wondering about my own bravery. Was I a coward? I had never really been put to the test, and I couldn’t help but wonder. You see I grew up reading comic books and the afore mentioned romanticized action novels and sci-fi stories that caused me to have this bloated sense of what a hero should be and what bravery looked like. So later on, when I ended up divorced and having to cope with the life of a single man. I was introduced to the nightlife by a friend who happened to be a bouncer at a local nightclub. I decided this would be the perfect way to prove to myself once and for all if I had it in me to be brave rather than cowardly. So I started working as a bouncer too. I did this job, as a part time gig, for five years. I was very good at it. I faced down guys much bigger than me and managed to survive all that time. I was never once afraid, even when a guy pulled a gun and stuck it in my side and told me to let him go. I held him until the cops got there daring him to shoot me the whole time. I got a reputation for being fearless and people avoided confronting me after that. So I knew I wasn’t a coward, even if I knew I wasn’t any kind of superhero. During those same years, I was an emotional wreck because of the breakup of my marriage. Working in the nightclub scene made alcohol more than just available – it was a free and endless well of forgetfulness. I dove in and attempted to drown myself in it. That particular stupidity almost succeeded in ending my days, not once but twice as I ended up in the hospital where my doctor told me if I didn’t quit drinking I would die. Well stupid doesn’t always win out and here I am.

  Honestly when I was a kid, with a very vivid imagination as you might imagine, I often dreamed about being married and what my wife would look like and be like. I was way off on that one too. Of course I had read a few books, to say the least, by the time I was a teenager and had some very romantic notions about love and how all that was supposed to work. Romance is all good and fun to read about, but it rarely works out in real life the way it does in novels. Most of those stories are more like fairy tales than fairy tales. Real love and real life can often be more like a tragedy than a romance. My love life was no fairy tale. But it had its moments. I’m happy to say that I am back married again to my first wife and the mother of my two children. So as the Beatles pondered, “Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?” Will she still love me when I’m 64? Today we find out. 

Relativity

Relativity

  Albert Einstein once said, “When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.” In essence all things are relative to your perceptions and perspective. Your perception of time passing is relative to what you’re doing at the moment. If you’re hungry and standing by the microwave waiting for three minutes to tick off of the timer, it seems like it takes forever. But if you’re watching your favorite TV show, that hour goes by way too quickly. Same thing if you’re at work; an eight or twelve hour shift can seem like an eternity. But on the weekend, that same eight or twelve hours is gone before you know it. It’s the same with your perception of size. It is all relative to your view point. Once when my son was only about three or four years old he had been in the bathroom taking a bath. One of my wife’s best friends dropped by for a visit, and I was standing in the kitchen talking to her waiting for my wife to return from grocery shopping. My son came running out of the bathroom, not knowing we had company, and yelled, “Dad, I’m finished with my bath.” My wife’s friend said laughing, “Oooh, I see a little TT.” My son froze in his naked as a jaybird tracks, looking at her for a moment, and then blurted out, “But my Daddy has a big one!” And then he ran back in the bathroom. I was turning fifty shades of red while my wife’s friend was laughing so hard she nearly passed out. My wife came back from her grocery shopping about that time and asked what was so funny. When her friend was finally able to stop laughing long enough to tell her, she asked my wife if what my son said was true. My darling sweet wife didn’t stick up for me at all. Instead she just started laughing uncontrollably too. Now I was displaying a remarkable new shade of red and decided it was time to make my retreat into the bathroom to help my son dry off. That’s a good, if altogether embarrassing, example of size being all too relative to your point of view. To further illustrate, when I look at a bunch of ants scurrying about their ant business, I feel like an impossibly large giant – so big that the ants aren’t even capable of perceiving me. But when I think of the universe, I feel way smaller than any ant, and I have a tough time getting my head around such immensity. So examples of relativity really are everywhere you look.

  There have been times in my life, when I bemoaned my situation. When I was feeling like the whole world was against me, and my situation couldn’t get much worse. One such time was on a Christmas eve when I was going through a rough patch in my marriage and, at the same time, was extremely worried about my son-in-law who was in the Army and had just been sent to Somalia. It was late in the evening, and I went out to throw the trash in the dumpster. When I tossed the bag over the side, I heard an unexpected noise. I climbed up on the side of the dumpster and was shocked to see a scraggly looking old man inside the dumpster looking for scraps of food. When I went back in the house and told my wife about it, she told me to go outside and invite him in to get something to eat. When I went back out there, he was already gone. I went back inside and sat and cried - ashamed of myself for thinking that my life was so bad. I realized it could be a lot worse. That old man in the dumpster scrounging for food on a Christmas Eve could have been me. I said a prayer for the old man in the dumpster and my son-in- law in Somalia, and then quit feeling sorry for myself and did something about my life in general. My attitude changed a great deal from that day forward. So bottom line, relativity is not only a good way to describe motion through space-time, but also a good way to relate to almost any situation you might find yourself in.  You might be riding the crest of a wave and seem to have everything going for you. But at the same time there are some doing much better feeling sorry for you and many doing much worse. Some of those doing much worse may even be happier than you are. It’s all relative to your own perspective and perceptions. So if you can fully grasp the concept of relativity and remind yourself to apply it to everyday situations in your life, you might find that you have more control over your life and happiness than you ever previously imagined. You may not be able to change your circumstances at will, but you can always change the way you perceive them. It’s all relative after all.

World of Destiny Book 3 Sample

Sample From World of Destiny Book 3: Disembarked

  

Why had they attacked Earth? Why did they kidnap him of all the people in Israel? That whole episode did not sit well in his mind, and he somehow sensed that it was not over. Others of their kind would come. Earth did not have the resources left to put up much resistance to any sort of invasion. Destiny did not have any kind of unity to put up more than a token fight. All this troubled him every time he thought about it, and it began to haunt his dreams with the rest of his nightmares.

  But at some level, Trevor realized it was better than what he could be dwelling on. For him, any thought of his ex-wife had the power to destroy his sense of wellbeing sending him spiraling down into an abyss of despair from which there was no way out. So he relentlessly pursued thoughts and plans or ways to deal with a red-eyed alien invasion instead. But the other thing was a rat in his brain, probing and gnawing, trying to find a weakness in his sense of self preservation. .

  Harella, somehow, sensed all this was going on in Trevor's mind. She did her best to keep him distracted. But he got irritable after a time, and she backed off. She was getting pretty good at determining when it was time to do just that. Harella was, by now, not ashamed to admit that she was deeply in love with Trevor. It was hard for her not to show how she felt every chance she got. She did the best she could to concentrate on other things even though it was obvious to everyone what was really on her mind. Harella was painfully aware that it was too soon for Trevor. He needed time to grieve before he would be ready to move on. She did her best to give him that time. So when Mary offered everyone a prolonged period of sleep it was a welcome relief to Harella and Trevor, as well as to their three bored companions.

  While their passengers slept, Mary and Georgia, along with the other ships in their company, sang new songs they composed, borrowing heavily from their latest adventures with their human friends for subject matter to pass the time. Strange new stars joined in their happy chorus in this alternate dimension and sent them well wishes to help propel them on their way towards their far away destination. They intertwined their histories with the music of this unfamiliar galaxy which caused the ships to experience so much joy.

  At the outskirts of their own galaxy their music had been exquisite. But near the heart of this strange twin galaxy they experienced, for the first time, real music. At the same time, they felt sorry for their passengers, because they were deaf to it all. They would never hear the sheer beauty of the telepathic songs the ships and stars made together. Mary knew that the physical music that her human friends made was just a feint echo brought on by some cosmic memory of what real music was all about. She intertwined her sadness for her friend's deficiency into her song. Georgia picked it up as well, and the stars wove it into their songs which eventually caused the whole of the cosmos to ache for them. Meanwhile, the humans slept on oblivious, dreaming their small human dreams.

Imaginary Friends

Imaginary Friends

  Have you ever had an imaginary friend? Or sat and watched children talking and playing with imaginary friends? I watched my daughter do this all the time when she was little. Once I sat in my mother-in-law’s den and watched my daughter through the back window playing alone outside. She was only about three years old at the time. This was back in the early seventies when I was still running around looking something like one of the Beatles with long hair and a beard…back in my hippie days. Anyway, my daughter was sitting in the shade of a pine tree on a picnic table and looking up into the branches having a conversation. I could hear her talking and laughing, but I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying. After a while, I went out there and sat with her on the table. I told her that I had seen her talking to someone and asked who it was. I wasn’t surprised by her behavior because, like I said, she often entertained imaginary guests and even invisible cats. But what surprised me this time is when she told me she had been talking to Jesus. Now I must confess I was pretty shocked by this. At this point in my life I was very much a non-believer - in religion anyway. Neither I nor my wife had ever talked about Jesus around her. I know my mother-in-law may have brought it up a time or two, but I doubted her mentioning it had made a very big impression on my daughter. I asked her how she knew it was Jesus she was talking to. She just smiled and said, “Because he had told me that’s who he was, silly.” I then asked her if it was Jesus she was talking to, what did he look like. She thought about it a second and then laughed and said, “He looks a whole lot like you.” “He looked like me?” I asked surprised even more because I was pretty sure she had never seen a picture of Jesus. “Yes, he had long hair and a beard, just like you, Daddy,” she told me seriously. Then I asked her if he was still up there in the tree. She looked up and said a little sadly, “No, he left when you came out.” Then she just started chatting away about something else altogether. I’ve never forgotten that day. My daughter doesn’t remember it, of course; after all she was only three at the time. But when I think about it, I’m still not quite sure what to believe. I knew my child had an overactive imagination (I wonder where she got that from?) so I was not ready to take it too seriously.

  I’ve been accused of having imaginary friends of my own by my kids and grandkids because they say I don’t have any real ones – at least none that they’ve ever met. And I have to admit I even made up several of them on facebook at one time to be my “friends” on Farmville and Battle Pirates. I got in big trouble for using my wife’s picture on the profile of one of those imaginary friends. I’m now banned from mentioning her name or posting her picture anywhere on the internet. These days, I have some very good and vivid imaginary friends named Trevor, Harella, Sarah, and Amir to mention only a few. They spend a lot of time with me almost every day. And sometimes I’m not so sure they are entirely imaginary. They certainly seem real to me now. I even know intimate details about their personal lives. By that standard, they are closer friends than anyone else I know. You would probably like them too, if you get to know them better. You can do that by reading the two books at the top of this blog.

  So was my daughter really talking to Jesus, or was he just another one of her imaginary friends? Who am I to say at this point? Do you have imaginary friends? If you tell me you talk to Jesus or your dead grandmother on a daily basis, I promise I won’t be the one laughing at you. I wouldn’t want to insult your friends that way. Or you. After all, in my world, sometimes my imaginary friends are much more fun to be with than the real ones. The only imaginary friends I have a problem with are the ones I end up killing off. They tend to get upset about that and hold a grudge. But most of all, I’m here to tell you that friends are a good thing to have, no matter where you find them, even if they happen to be sitting up in the branches of a pine tree on a beautiful sunny day.

Crying Out in the Darkness

Crying Out In the Darkness

  Tough times come to all of us sooner or later. I don’t wish them on anybody. I’ve been through enough of those in my life, and I’m sure there will be more of them. Is there any way to prepare yourself for them? Not really. The only thing that I have found that makes a difference for me is my faith. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a religious person by most people’s standards. I don’t belong to any church. I’ve attended several in the past and often found comfort at some of them. I freely admit that I went during some of those tough times when my personal life was in shambles, and I was there more for the human companionship than I was for worshiping. You see, I personally feel like I worship just fine no matter where I’m at. I don’t need a church for that. Some people do, I guess, and that’s fine. It’s not a bad thing to draw strength and encouragement from like-minded people.  The last time I went to a church was several years ago. I was not going through one of those tough times for once. I just had moved back to Texas and decided I would find a church here that I might want to attend on a more regular basis. It was one of those non-denomination churches.  I got there a little early, and someone directed me to the Sunday school class that I would be in as a single adult. I was the first one there. So I took a seat and waited. The class filled up and as each person came in, they gave me a quick glance obviously aware that I was a newcomer. But no one said anything to me. The subject that day was forgiveness. A topic I definitely needed some instruction on at that time. The instructor also noticed me, but a quick nod in my direction was about it. After the class we adjourned to the main meeting hall. I sat there in the middle of strangers; most of them were with families and loved ones. I sat in the middle all by my lonesome. I can’t even remember what the sermon was about. But halfway through it, a feeling of such sadness came over me and tears came pouring down my face. It was not a reaction to the sermon at all. It was not over some sadness or cataclysmic event going on in my life – as I said; my life was going okay for a change at that time. The longer I sat there the worse the feeling got. So I finally got up and left. Of course I got some stares and questioning looks on the way out, and it was embarrassing to say the least to leave in the middle of the sermon with tears rolling down my face. I never went back there. I haven’t been to any other church since then either. I’m not saying that all churches would have the same effect on me. But I definitely felt something was sadly missing in that one.

  Tough times came again not too long after that. I started dating a woman I met on the internet. She was an amazing person that I fell for almost immediately. The first time I told her that I was in love with her, she asked me to leave and told me we would talk about that the next time we were together. Not exactly the kind of response I was looking for. On our next date, she informed me that she had been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and didn’t know how much longer she had to live. She told me that she would understand if I got up and walked away ending our relationship. She asked that I think about it long and hard before I said anything else. I didn’t have to think long and hard. I told her that I was already in love with her. I asked her what kind of person would leave someone they loved just because they were not perfectly healthy. I wasn’t that kind of a person. And even if we decided to just be friends from then on, I would always be there for her right up to the end. I would be there holding her hand, no matter what. We were together for five wonderful years and very deeply in love before she passed. I was there holding her hand just like I promised when her time came. She, more than anyone, renewed my faith and gave me the strength I needed to forgive past transgressions and face whatever tough times are still ahead of me. Life goes on. Tough times will no doubt come again. But instead of crying out in the darkness, and blaming God for them, I will always fall back on my faith and the valuable lessons I learned from a beautiful spirit who shared my life for way too short a time. So my friends, if you’re reading this and going through your own tough times and just need someone to be there and hold your hand…Have a little faith and call me. I will be there.

New World Order

New World Order

  Today, the thing that seems to be on my mind the most is the so-called “New World Order” that everyone keeps talking about. Is it real or not? Is it something we should be concerned about? First of all, those three words together would only make sense to me if we were talking about a completely new world, and subsequently trying to bring some kind of order to it. But if the NWO that we’re talking about is applied towards this world? I highly doubt that it would ever be possible without the cataclysmic destruction of most of the world’s population. Of course there are those that surmise that this is exactly what those behind the NWO movement have in mind. And that’s a scary thought. People calling for this NWO have been many and some of them have been very public about their concerns. Einstein and collaborators responsible for the first atomic bomb were so fearful of their own creation that they began to advocate a one world government as the only way to avoid a future nuclear holocaust. There have been many politicians who have mentioned the possibility of a NWO like Ronald Reagan and others. But can you really see all the various nations, who mostly hate each other, ever agreeing to give up their sovereignty to such a government? No way. It would have to be done by crook or force.

  I’ve even read books by people who say they’ve had personal encounters with aliens from other worlds (usually described as Nordic in appearance and from the Pleiades system as opposed to the Greys who are only interested in our DNA) who stressed to them that we need to get rid of our false religion and form a one world government before we would be allowed to progress in our relationship with them. One contactee in Europe even started a society whose aim was to bring all this about. And if that’s not outrageous enough, there are those like David Icke that believe we have already been infiltrated by reptilian aliens who are manipulating us to that end. Their end game, according to him, is to be in control of that world government and enslave the rest of us. I personally think he’s watched way too many episodes of “V”, but that’s just my own opinion.

  In the “Star Trek” series, our future selves have achieved not only a one world government but a confederation of planets ruled by such a government. The picture above was borrowed from a scene in the Star Trek Movie. Of course us being confronted by the real threat of extra-terrestrials might be impetus enough to make that happen. Otherwise, I just don’t see it in our very near future. And just how would we keep them honest? What would stop a one world government from becoming abusive? Nothing seems to be able to stop a national government from doing so. So outside of being a necessity for thwarting an alien invasion, would it even be a desirable thing? Would it bring peace to a world that has seen very little of it all throughout mankind's history? Could we even imagine a one world government that could be described as benevolent and a benefit to all mankind? Human nature seems to rule that out in the long run. I fear it would more likely only bring subjugation of all the people of the world giving the powers that be a more efficient tool towards that end. Will it happen someday, nonetheless? Probably. Man’s history shows a progression of cooperation from individuals, to clans, from that to tribes, from there to city-states, from that to nation-states. The next logical step in the progression is to the world state. In most science fiction stories and even in Biblical ones, that next step is never a good thing. In my imaginings, it would only come at such a great cost that it haunts my nightmares. So what do you think? Will the world ever be ready for a one world government?

Below is a link to a very comprehensive discussion on this same topic. Let me know what you think about it. (The comment button below after all is not just there for looks.)

http://io9.com/5969802/when-will-we-finally-have-a-world-government

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

  When I say I have random thoughts – I mean I really have some very random thoughts all the time. Like just while I was typing this, I was thinking about a story where a writer spends so much of his time writing about life that he forgets to live it. What would happen if he stopped writing one day and went to the fridge for something to eat? And he found a note hanging on it, from his family saying they left him because they were tired of being neglected. And he had to think real hard to even remember his family and couldn’t imagine where they might have gone anyway. So he sits down with a tuna sandwich and turns on the TV, only to see where his whole part of the state has been evacuated. And it goes on and on from there. While I was busy typing the above, another random thought popped into my head. I wondered, what if wormholes are real and one suddenly popped open in my backyard. Would I be brave enough to just jump in and see where it goes? And what if I did? And when I came out on the other end  there was this whole world with nothing but watermelon fields (yeah, I'm a little hungry for fresh watermellon right now) as far as you could see. And when I sat down to eat one of them, I found out that the watermelon farmers where these big giant pig looking creatures with foot-long tusks and they didn’t take too kindly to watermelon poachers. If there was nothing but watermellon fields, where would I run to? Where would I hide? And then I thought about the blue sky outside – yeah that’s really a nice thing to see on the first day of February, especially when the temperature feels more like the first day in April. But I thought what if the color I think of as blue is really not blue at all? What if I’m color blind. What if we all are? What color do flies see the sky as? Are they even aware of the sky? I mean they do some serious buzzing around, but do they ever look up?

  So, as you can see, my mind is all over the place. I just wrote the above without any forethought or planning at all. Just sat down and let it rip with things that came spewing out of my overactive imagination. So when my wife asks me the inevitable question that women like to ask men when they see we’re not paying them the requisite amount of attention, “What were you thinking about just now?” – How am I supposed to answer that? And does she really want to know? I have tried to answer truthfully a couple of times, but she always looks at me like I’ve completely lost my freaking mind. And then she goes on like she didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear, what I just said. Like if we ignore it, it will just go away like some 800 pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the living room that we both know can’t be there so we will just ignore it, and it will subsequently vanish back into the mist where it came from. Women are better than us at ignoring things they don’t want to think about. Me, I couldn't get the stupid gorilla out of my head. I would be trying to get to know it better and maybe make it my knew best friend. Anyway, nowadays, I try to be prepared. It’s always good to be prepared right? So like most women, she thinks that all men ever really think about is alcohol, sports, or naked women, and not necessarily in that order. I’ve done nothing to dispel that perception from her preconceived notions. It’s sort of a self-defense mechanism of mine. But perhaps it is true of most men. I have no way to tell, though, other than the fact that when I’m in the company of men only, that’s the only thing I hear most of them talking about. But I have to confess that I’m not like most men. So I have to be ready at the drop of the hat with things like, “Nothing Dear, I was just wondering who was going to win the Super Bowl.” Or this one, “Nuttin’ Honey, I was just thinking that a good cold beer would sure taste great about now.” I haven’t come up with a good one about the naked women thing yet. After all, I may be a little scatter-brained, but I’m not stupid. If I went anywhere near that one, I might end up with a beer bottle bashed up against the side of my head and have to watch the Super Bowl on one of those ridiculous little hospital TV’s instead of my glorious HD 65" big screen.

  So, I generally just make it a rule to keep my random thoughts to myself. Or hey, I could splash them all over a blog page somewhere. Fortunately for me, my wife doesn’t get on the internet and read blog pages. But since I am trying to be a writer, you could see how having such a scatter-brain could be a good thing. If you have random thoughts all the time like me, you might want to give it some serious consideration and try to sit down in front of a blank Microsoft Word page and let her rip. Who knows, yours could be the next best seller that everyone is going gaga over? You just never know until you try.