Category: Love

bullying, Law of Attraction, Love, parenting

Sometimes those closest to us are not always the best support.

Katrina Russell

I know people can get a little turned off when I mention the word “church”, but I was in church last week and we had a visiting priest from Africa. The Central African Republic to be precise.. anyway, he said that he was very interested to do the homily that week, because it was about Jesus’s (trigger word… bare with you) speech about being judged by those you know.

There is a part of the Bible in which Jesus speaks and everyone questions his authority, as he was just the son of a carpenter… and they knew of his humble beginnings.. and how could HE possibly be important. The Father went on to say how he knows how it feels. He came to this new church on the other side of the world and he was welcomed and respected, and though he loved his home there were always those that would never take him seriously because he was the kid that did…. what have you, 20 years ago.

When starting something new in life this is often a problem that people have. We are already set in our ways and it is difficult enough to start a new course and reprogram our own minds, but it is all the more difficult with the naysayers in our ears. I can remember when I was starting my health journey and I was cutting bad foods and trying to exercise more, and the hardest people to be around were the ones that were closest to me. The ones who were like, “oh… another diet” or “yeah, we can go out next week when you’re over your kick” or “it’s just a piece of cake” .. or pizza or what have you.. “It’s not a big deal. You’ve always eaten it before.”

There is something about human nature that people almost take it as a personal insult if you decide to change.. as if you’re trying to be better than the other person or that your change means that they should change as well.

As I have mentioned before people are very determined to stay the image that they have assigned for themselves. They like their habits. They know their identity. Anything outside of that makes them very uncomfortable. So if identity is permanent than you shouldn’t be able to change yours either. This is an extremely hard battle to wage when  you’re already fighting your own mind.

A lot of people will tell you not to share your process or your plans with others. I’m not sure that I agree with that or not. I think it depends on your own resilience at that time (which can change from day to day and minute to minute), and also your opinion of the other person.. as well as a million other things. I do think that it is important to have a support system.. and that there are always those in your life that you KNOW you can’t depend on for support. Them, you avoid like the plague.

I believe this is why support groups like AA and weight watchers and the like are so important. Humans are, at our core, social beings. We need to connect with others. We need support, whether we like to admit it or not, but we can’t always get that at home with the people who are happy in the status quo or feel more comfortable holding our pasts against us. When it’s time for a change.. sometimes we have to make bold sweeping changes. We need to turn away from getting comfort in what’s familiar and move on to a new tribe if you like. The most important thing is not letting other’s define your identity.

Law of Attraction, Love, parenting

Careful the tale you tell That is the spell

Katrina Russell

I have to start by saying I love the film “Into the Woods”.. yes I know that it is also a play, but I haven’t see that.. and it’s pretty much the same thing. (spoiler) Anyway, it’s one of those fairytale  stories with the morals all mixed in. There’s the one about honesty and the one for being true to yourself and going after your dreams but not forsaking others… and on and on.

thThe finale of the movie is my favorite, though. It’s a song about being careful what you put out into the world. There is a new baby and a scared father and the words are to be careful the things that you say, as children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will learn. It explains how children are constantly picking up on everything that we do and say. If we say that they’re lazy, they will believe it. If we say that they’re bad… they will believe it. If we say that we are bad or not worthy.. they will believe it.. and will learn the same of themselves. Our words and actions will become their words and actions.

Now if that isn’t impressive enough, then it gets into a refrain and it changes..

Careful the wish you make
Wishes are children
Careful the path they take
Wishes come true, not free

Careful the spell you cast
Not just on children
Sometimes a spell may last
Past what you can see
And turn against you
Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell

It starts to talk about the words that we say to ourselves and how we create our own stories based on these words. We create our own reality as we begin to hear and say these words over and over.

It’s very common for someone to put all of their faith into an outside event and believe that their life cannot be complete until we get that love interest.. or the job, or the education, or the right body/looks.. and so forth. We tell ourselves this “story” so often that we can’t see past it. We can’t move forward in anyway until we reach that goal. Now sometimes this is a good thing, and it motivates us to strive for our best… but sometimes it holds us back from creating the life we truly want.

The other story that we like to tell ourselves is all of the reasons that our past is our problem. We have never succeeded in life because.. our parents were jerks, our exes left us, we didn’t finish school.. we’ve always been….. and that’s our story. That’s who we have become> we no longer have hopes and dreams and motivations.. we simply have our fallback “reasons” for our problems.

All of these are nothing but words.. nothing but stories, and fairytales. Our lives are not our past or our future, our lives are the choices that we make everyday. So be careful the things you say.. and do.. they are you. 

 

Law of Attraction, Love

Sometimes you have to be willing to die in order to really live

Katrina Russell

I was listening to an old broadcast, which I like to do, about the Law of Attraction and I heard the most interesting analogy. I had heard the woman speak before, and I knew her story about not having enough diapers for her son when he was a baby and deciding right then and there to change her life. I remember being very stricken by the story as I looked at my own baby boy the first time that I heard it, but she the comment she made this time shook me.

She said that she had to be ready to die to create a new life for herself. Now I remember thinking this long ago when I thought about those who were suicidal and how the thought of feeling so desperate that they had to die instead of just leaving everything behind and starting anew, and that’s basically what she was saying. She wasn’t suicidal, but she had to be ready to let go of her entire past, her world, her friends, and even her identity to become the person that she dreamed of being.

thI don’t know much about Tarot card readings but I know that the death card comes up a lot in movies to freak people out.. but the true meaning of the card is just major change. It can be either good or bad but something in your life has to end.. or die.. in order for something new to begin.

I see it a lot in both my personal life and my practice, where a person really wants their life to change… but they  don’t really want to change. They want to lose weight, but they don’t really want to give up pizza and crashing on the couch watching 5 hours of TV at night.. it’s who they are.. and that is true. They are the person who eats pizza in front of the TV and is 60lbs over weight. In order to not be that person they need to change.

They want a new job and a better career path, but they don’t want to do any work to learn a new skill in order to move into another field or up the ladder. They want a new relationship but don’t want to change the types of guys they date or where they meet them. They don’t want to become something more desirable to a different caliber person. Now, I know I’m going to get people who disagree with this and say that people shouldn’t have to change to get others to be interested.. and to a certain degree that’s true.

No one should change their core beliefs, no one should pretend to be something that they’re not. No one should be made to feel like they are wrong or less than.. but that is different than someone working to better themselves in order to create a better life. I remember dating guys in my 20s who were very nice and sweet but just not going anywhere in their lives and I wanted more out of mine. I wanted someone who had hopes and dreams no matter what they were and when I explained that to them they said that they could change.

That to me was not an option. That to me was someone changing for the wrong reasons. I’m not talking about someone becoming the an ideal imagine that someone specific wants. That’s not staying true to yourself, but after I realized that I didn’t have the life that I wanted and that I wasn’t living my best self or meeting men that were living and being what I wanted I had to reevaluate my life. What did I want? Who did I want to be? And what was holding  me back? Was it my friends who always just wanted to go out for dinner and drinks instead of outside activities? Was it dates who just wanted to sit around and eat pizza and play video games or watch movies instead of going to museums or having inspirational conversations? What did I want in my  life, and what would I have to cut and change to get that.. and be that?

It is perfectly acceptable to change your entire world and let go of people who do not want what you want or at least want to help or encourage you to get what makes you happy. It is not the same as changing to make someone else happy. Sometimes you need to pull the plug on your old life support system to get the recharge to start a new one.

Law of Attraction, Love

What can you imagine?

Katrina Russell

“I’m going to create a giant motor out of metal, that can carry a giant metal cylinder in downloadthe air and fly on it”.. imagine how crazy that must have sounded. Now, obviously when the Wright brother’s first created a plane it wasn’t nearly as fancy and mostly made of wood and pullies, but you get the idea. The thought of flight was absurd, but now we’re crisscrossing around the world in breaking the sound barrier.. cuz that’s a thing.

As I sit in my office with the a/c blasting because it’s a million degrees out I cam very thankful that Willis Carrier for figuring out a way to create yet another metal box of mysterious powers that can use chemicals to cool off entire buildings and cars.. which in and of themselves are incredible.

People often talk about man made inventions but they don’t really talk about the amazing imagination that comes behind those creations. I was driving to work one day sitting in traffic and I was struck by the fact that not only did someone figure out that crude oil can be turned into gasoline, and that gasoline can be used to run giant engines that can move people and objects thousands of miles, but the cars themselves are made up of the same crude oil, metals, and sand that has been on this planet since the beginning of time.

The mobile phones that we talk on… who am I kidding.. that we text on and surf on and watch movies on are also made of crude oil and metals from the ground.. how in the Hell did anyone figure that out. If someone from today was somehow transported back.. even few hundred years ago and talk about the everyday toys we use today they would be locked up and probably given drugs and shock treatment for insanity. If they brought back a fully charged cell phone and played a downloaded movie they would be burned at the stake for witchcraft.

The ideas that come from the imaginations of normal people have changed the entire thworld, and at this point parts of the solar system, and only expanding from there. In fact there has yet to be an idea that has been proven  to be not possible.. maybe a cure for a disease hasn’t happened but we’re close.. maybe we can only GO INTO SPACE a short way.. but we have been in f****n SPACE. If humanity has proven anything it is that we are amazing and capable beings.

So, the next time you’re hear the thoughts inside your head saying anything about you is stupid, or wrong, or incapable.. I want you to think about the fact that you are sitting in a house with windows that are still made from really over heated sand.. and tell me that there is anything that is not possible in this world.

I don’t know how we make things happen. I don’t know if it’s random change.. a God of your choice.. or we’re living in the Matrix, but when I look around this world I see the most amazing things.. some of them natural, some of them “man made” but all of them created out of nothing but possibility and patience. If you know.. I mean really know what you want in life.. then you also know how to get it.. you just have to be willing to do the work.

 

Law of Attraction, Love

If what you think you become.. what would be your theme song?

Katrina Russell

Can our thoughts change anything? That’s an ongoing theme in my writing and my studies and something that, at this point, I can’t understand how anyone doesn’t believe it.

I was raised with this belief. On my wall as a child I had a poster that said, “If you believe it, you can become it”. My father would often tell me to watch the words that I said to downloadmyself, as I would believe them. If I complained of being tired, I was really just making myself feel more tired. When I doodled in my notebooks that I loved a boy in my  teen years, my father told me that I was actually hypnotizing myself into those thoughts. That any thought, repeated, especially subconsciously would become a belief in my mind, and therefore true.

We all have a million thoughts a day, some good some bad. We all tell ourselves things and then love or hate the thing when it comes to fruition, but to me, the most important thoughts that people have are the thoughts of how they feel.

When I’m on social media I’m constantly seeing jokes and memes about how much everyone is miserable and everyone hates their lives. Depression and anxiety are at an all time high and medication is being passed around like candy. Now, while I’m not opposed to medication as a whole, I do feel that we, as a society are overly medicated. Everyone believe in the power of instantly feeling better as long as it’s prescribed by a doctor, as long as it’s “science”.

Yet, if someone says to “cure” most forms of common depression (I’m not talking about severe clinical depression.. though it can help) that one just needs to cut junk food (especially sugar) and get some exercise (especially outside) and meditate/practice gratitude.. they are considered a crack pot.. but science says it’s true.

We, as humans, are completely controlled by how brains and our nervous system. Our feelings are just a consequence of glands secreting substances and our neurons firing. If we need to feel happy we need chemicals in our system like Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins.. so we take artificial ones to trick our brain into being happy.. but our bodies can actually make those chemicals themselves in simple ways. We can think about something happy and we automatically smile and feel better. We can hug someone we love. We can even listen to music.

It’s amazing to me how much outside stimuli can change one’s whole perspective. I was driving home the other day after a long hot cranky 5 year old afternoon and I was feeling very drained. Not so much depressed at this point, but just exhausted. One of those days when I was thinking dinner at 4 and bedtime at 6.. then an old song came on. Ironically it was a song about remembering old times (New Kids on the Block; I remember when… yup.. that’s my life) and I was instantly transported back to my 8th grade semi-formal. I could remember my dress and my friends and a bittersweet feeling rushed over me.

I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t sad.. but I also wasn’t tired anymore. I felt spirited, just as I did 30 years ago at the prospect of leaving behind middle school and starting up with all my friends at the high school. I remembered the petty fights and the ridiculous clothes and the cute boys and I actually giggled to myself. I was no longer sitting in my truck with a cranky kid after fighting with him about EVERYTHING that day. I was in my middle school courtyard on a beautiful June evening laughing with my friends and wishing Joey McIntyre was actually singing to me.

I have had similar experiences with smells and sunsets, and even seeing my son sleeping at the end of a long day.. when everything seems to disappear and the only thing that matters is that moment, that second in all of time. No one can tell me that my thoughts don’t create my reality. I know that I don’t have to be miserable just because the world is not perfect.. the world is filled with perfection.. I just have to be happy and open enough to see them.

bullying, Love, Politics, school shootings

We are all “The Gifted”

Katrina Russell

I just started binge watching an interesting show. It’s called “The Gifted” for those that don’t know, I am a geek and love superhero shows, this one is about mutants. It’s along the same lines as the X-Men, only it’s way more human.. and way more political.

This show follows a family and their experiences after the two teenage children discover their powers. They had spent their whole lives thinking that they were “human” and had no reason to think otherwise. In this show the “x gene” is both hereditary and random so anyone can be and/or have a mutant at any time without warning.

downloadThe title is a bit misleading because the mutants are not considered “gifted” by most of the population. They are considered enemies and threats to all human kind. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t some mutants using their powers for evil.. as they are .. shall we say, human, but for the most part they are just ordinary people. There are some, like the kids focused in the beginning of the show, who hurt others accidentally before they learn how to control their powers, and there are others who hurt people in self defense,  but the authorities aren’t interested in motives, they are only interested in locking up and/or killing every mutant.

There is a campaign, a government agency, and private sector companies who are Hell bent on taking out all mutants.. they see it as the only way to save humanity. They see it as a way to keep humans pure. Does any of this sound familiar? It should, because it’s exactly the same things that are being said about anyone that is not English speaking, white, Christians in the US.

There is a Senator in the show that runs his whole campaign on “Making America Human Again” and ridding the world of Mutants, as if every mutant everywhere is evil. As if every mutant everywhere is dangerous. Funny, men with guns aren’t dangerous.. but a mutant who can make flowers bloom needs to be destroyed.

Of course this movement to exterminate everyone of it’s kind is not met with open arms by the mutants and they are forced to fight back. The humans in this show are clearly the monsters and everyone can see it. Sure, they all have their backstories. They have lost loved ones to mutants or what have you, but that’s how it always starts. A few bad apples creates an us vs them mentality. Fear and anger become the prevailing force behind decisions and no one can see reality.

The interesting thing that I see about this argument is how no one can be bothered to th (2)talk to one another. In real life we have certain groups against illegals or Muslims because they have heard that some have hurt innocent people.. They feel that anyone that even looks like they could fit in these categories should be punished immediately, yet they are the same people who scoff and ridicule at the thought that guns should be outlawed because they are used more often than not to kill and maim innocents everyday.

In this case the constitution is clear… everyone should be allowed guns.. well, everyone except those who look like those other people.. and rights to privacy, and freedom or speech and religion and association.. all paramount to the building blocks of this great country… well, that is white.. Christian… male.. citizens of this country.. I mean if they have brown skin, or wear anything weird on their heads clearly they aren’t “real Americans”. Even though they have the right to the freedom of religion.. that only counts if they choose Christianity.. and they have the right to freedom of speech.. but that only counts if they chose to say it in English.. the not official, but we want it to be language of this great country.. who is so great because of all the people who came here.. and fought.. but not the new ones that come here and fight.. because they don’t count cuz… WE WERE HERE FIRST >:-P

Yeah.. America the Great.. home of the Free.. right.

bullying, Law of Attraction, Love, Politics, Prayer

If this world was created, who’s watching, and what drives the ratings?

Katrina Russell

I was watching an interesting video on YouTube today about whether or not we live in a simulated universe. These were real scientists, like Neil Degrass Tyson who was moderating it, and they had plausible arguments supporting the idea. I have seen the video a few times and always found it both fascinating and ridiculous at the same time.

thDo we live in the Matrix and if so what does that mean to us? Today though, I noticed something that I had not before. One of them commented that if we were made as a game to entertain others that “You’d better go out and do something interesting as to not get deleted” and NDT joked that was what death was, it’s just someone getting bored with the character. I didn’t really think much of that analogy, as most of the world is full of very boring people… but what sparked in my mind is the idea of religion and the “creator” who has somehow spread the word that he/she is the best and that it is the people’s job to get other’s to follow that word.

Now for those who know about religions around the world, most aren’t that different in their content. It’s about worshiping a specific deity and loving each other and the best way to love one another is to get your neighbors to worship the same God. This message supposedly comes down from the creator of this world.

Now, anyone that knows anything about good TV and ratings knows that the more the drama the better the ratings. I, personally, am a big fan of the soap opera General Hospital. Recently one of the social media posts asked if a couple was basically deemed irrelevant once they were happily married.. if the drama ended? Everyone, even those who don’t watch traditional Soaps know that love triangles and evil twins are common place in that world. Anything that can create conflict, and there has been nothing on this planet that has created more conflict than religion.

So, if this is somehow a simulated reality in which a creator, in which ever form you choose decided to design a universe for their own entertainment purposes the first thing this creator would do is give the “people” something to fight about. Make them look different. Make them speak differently, so it’s more complicated to communicate. Make them all believe that they were chosen by the ultimate creator to be the chosen group.

Now, I don’t know if there’s a God, or a 15 year old computer geek who created an entire universe just to watch porn, but I know that in either case, hate and violence has a much higher rating than peace and tranquility. Just ask Dick Wolf (the creator of Law and Order). That one show lasted 20 years and had multiple spin offs, with very little main character development… it was all about the murder and mayhem.

The United States is a classic example of hate for the sake of hate. The whole country was created on the basis that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. We pride ourselves on being a melting pot and being of Christian values of loving and helping thy neighbor. We are the land of opportunity. We have a plaque that says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”. We have proud American’s talking about how we need to respect what other’s have given their lives for.. all while saying that we should keep out anyone that doesn’t look like, talk like, and think like us.

The United States of America was supposed to be a beacon of what it meant to be free. Freedom of speech, Freedom of Religion, free to love, free to live, free to be all that we can be, and yet.. somehow, some way, a large group of people have been programmed that unless you use that freedom to be a white, male, English speaking, Christian.. you have chosen wrong.

I’m not sure what can be done to undo the programming of hate, whether by an all powerful creator or just generations of all powerful fools.. but I think we need to look at what we all hold dear in those religious and philosophical texts. Love, peace, and kindness only wins out when we start acting that way towards everyone and respect the differences. Not when we keep expecting everyone to choose us as right.

Law of Attraction, Love

Create the life you love.. don’t dwell on the life you hate

Katrina Russell

Imagine if people put as much energy into creating the life that they want as they did into putting down and destroying others? Everywhere we look today we see posts and videos and commentary about how bad someone else is and about how if not for someone else the world would be great. People spend hours and days and lifetimes finding reasons and people to blame for all that ails them.

th (1)Imagine, though, if instead of concentrating on the things that irritate, or corrode the life that we want we actually spent time and energy on the things that we do want. This can be used in any context. I don’t care if you’re complaining about our president, your ex, or the latest diet that didn’t work for you. Wasting our energy on things that we don’t want in our world only keeps us for using that same energy on the things that we do.

Take politics for example. The news and in turn everyday people spend so much time complaining and arguing about the horrible things that Trump and or his people are doing and how to get him out…but I have yet to see anyone put energy into a viable person or persons who they can put up next year to oust him.

I see post upon post.. meme upon meme, about the ex who didn’t respect me and how I deserve respect and how you’re going to regret losing me because I’m so good and your so great and how could anyone like me ever care about anyone like you and you’re going to see just how amazing I am.. and .. and ..and… time to move on honey. I’m not talking to the ex who’ll see it.. I’m talking to you.. who can’t let it go. Don’t think about the one that screwed up, think about who you want next. Think about the person that you want to become to attract the person that you deserve.

We hate our jobs, we hate our bodies, we hate people… and all we do is talk about these things…. BITCH about these things. If we put half of our energy into creating things that we adore instead of complaining about the things we abhor we may actually have a happy thoughts, that may lead to happy moods, that lead to happy lives.

I get that things can be bad. I get that there is a lot to fight in this world, but the point is to fight for, not fight against. I don’t want to spend my life fighting against one man. I want to spend my life fighting for ideas, and causes, and people. I want to spend my life talking about things that I love and why they are so wonderful and why they deserve to be respected and cherished.

I think about my son. He is 4 years old. He hates bedtime and broccoli.. you know what he never talks about? Bedtime and broccoli. Even when it’s what I’m trying to make him do these things. He doesn’t cry about how he hates bedtime. He cries and sometimes negotiates something that he does want. When I say that it’s time for bed his response isn’t “I hate bed and I never want to go to bed” his response is, “I want to play a game/watch TV/read a book” and because he concentrates on things that he wants and not what he doesn’t want a lot of times there is compromise. A lot of times I will say, “Ok, if you brush your teeth, potty, and get on your pjs without a fight and you can get one more book” it works. Just yelling “I hate bed!” doesn’t accomplish anything. There is no alternative to getting what he does want.

So you hate Trump, all men cheat, and you don’t want to give up yummy food to be thin.. great… but what do you want instead. Where is the focus? Who are you going to vote FOR in 2020? Do all men really cheat and if so are you wanting to switch teams or are you ok staying single until you meet someone who doesn’t… while letting go of the ones that do? What are you willing to do to reach your health goal? Maybe you want to be able to eat that piece of chocolate but that means extra minutes at the gym or joining a sport or hiking that peak. Don’t tell me what you don’t want.. tell me what you do.

bullying, Healthcare, Love

Why are we still not talking about suicide?

Katrina Russell

I don’t get the whole taboo way of thought about mental health. I grew up with a mother who was schizophrenic. I had no problem telling people this, and people always are shocked by my openness. My son’s father has mental health and addiction issues and when I mention this people hush me. I have an aunt who is actually educated as a therapist and the thought of me telling anyone that my ex is a drug addict makes her cringe.

I don’t get it. These are illnesses. If my son’s father had cancer should I keep that hushed? My father had diabetes, and there was no problem with me talking about that. Most mental illness can be, at least helped, by medication and or different cognitive therapies… don’t we want this?

Healthcare is a huge topic of discussion right now. Gun violence is a huge topic of discussion right now… two rich celebrities within a week of one another lost their battles with mental illness and killed themselves, and yet, no one actually wants to talk about mental illness. I mean, people will wear colors or post memes and pictures to commemorate the fallen, but no one wants to actually talk about what’s going on in this world… with themselves or their loved ones.

thNo one wants to understand how someone can loose all hope. No one wants to acknowledge the reality that is illness. They want to point fingers. They want to call the fallen weak and selfish and pathetic. They want to pretend that they are just so much stronger and would never be that desperate, but the truth is mental illness is everywhere and can affect anyone. The only way we can do anything to prevent any suicides and mass killings is to talk about mental health and to make it a safe and open environment for everyone to seek help.

If I break my leg I’m considered an idiot if I don’t go to a doctor.. but if something in me is broken. If I’m feeling just too sad, or too angry, or too fearful then I’m just a miserable person that needs to get over it and it’s my problem. If I try to seek help for my health them I’m labeled crazy. If I reach my breaking point and I do something desperate I’m the villain, even in the case of self hurting (suicide and/or drugs).. I’m not a victim… I’m out to hurt my loved ones.

I’m on social media a lot. There are all kinds of jokes, and memes about being miserable, hating other people, and feeling overly insecure, anxious, or stressed. This is completely normal and laughable. It’s become a staple in our society to be miserable. Relationships are designed to break our hearts, jobs are designed to break our spirits, and friends are only there to commiserate with. Anyone who talks about good things in life or wanting more are laughed at as if they’re delusional.

We have become a society of miserable, overly self medicated, unhealthy carbon sacks… and when anyone among us expresses that we have a real problem we are told that it’s all “in our heads” and that everyone is hopeless and not to feel special. WHAT?!?!?!?

Why would anyone want to be despondent? Maybe if we all had to get evaluated regularly with our mental health like we do with our physical health.. maybe just maybe… we wouldn’t be as sick, on all ends.

bullying, Law of Attraction, Love, parenting, Politics, Prayer

The father, the sun? the Holy what?

Katrina Russell

I just got back from church and today’s topic was a heated one that has been debated for millennia by theologians and novice alike.  What is the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit?  They are 3 different things… but yet all the same. The priest at my church discussed the different analogies used, like St Patrick and his shamrock, the theory that they were like the different stages of water, or some other that God was the sun, the light was Jesus and the warmth was the Holy Spirit. He concluded by saying that we may never understand, but that ours was not to know. Ours was to believe. That all would be clear after death.

Now, I know a lot of you are probably rolling your eyes. This is one of the problems that religion has. Everything must be taken as fact and believed without proof… but, in my humble opinion, proof is suspect.

If I tell someone that I believe that the world is amazing, that I find awe in a sunset, in the way that life renews itself, in the fact that water does only change and that because of it’s necessity in life it is incapable of ceasing to exist, that child birth and the bond created, no one would bat an eye. If I made a casual comment about how the “universe” is incredible that it was able to contrive such a masterpiece. Everyone would agree. If I said, “God is incredible”, I would get scoffs and eye rolls. If I said, “Allah is incredible” I would have Homeland security bugging my phones. If I said, “The Goddess is incredible” I’d get men claiming I’m a feminazi.

Vocabulary causes 90% of all problems in this world. I was talking with another mother the other day about cliques and how they separate kids, especially in high school. Humans are designed as a tribe species. We need other’s in order to survive. From the time of early man (you can choose your own origin) we needed each other for protection. We needed help with our young, help with hunting, and gathering, and babysitting. We needed to be with others who would love us as their own in order to ensure the continuation of our species.

Since most of the breeding happened within these tribes it started to create homogeneous looking, speaking, and so forth groups that created societies and cultures. When those from outside came into that tribe it was survival to be suspect, most people who ventured outside of their homeland were not looking to join another, they were looking to conquer, or pillage. There is nothing new about this. If an area ran out of food, they needed to find a new place that was full with food. If someone else was already there then they were an obstacle keeping your tribe from said food.

Most of us learned about the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Vikings… and even the Europeans who came and “discovered” America. They did this not to assimilate or to help those who the “found”. They did it to get as much as they could for those who were like them… for their tribe. This is just how human nature works, and this is unfortunate.

If anyone ever bothered to talk to each other they would realize how alike they really are. How much people actually agree and just use different words for the same things. I’m not talking about the politics that go along with ideas, that’s where the tribes culture starts to come in to affect, but the main ideas behind the religion, the philosophy, the values are the same.

I was speaking with a Native American Owl Priestess and she was joking about the Twix commercial in which they use the example of the left and right Twix being the same as a bouncer and a doorman being the same.. or a spirit and a ghost being the same. Growing up I heard the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit interchanged. I’ve heard Jesus and God interchanged. I’ve heard Allah is what Muslims call God. Today in church they said how “God is Abba.. meaning Father” which is true. Abba is the Arabic word for Father… because Jesus WAS ARABIC.

These books that everyone follow are transcribed over and over from one tribe to the next, in one language to the next, and for anyone who ever saw the News Radio episode when Jimmy James’s book was translated to Japanese and then back, you would know how much even one word being changed can make a difference. The Bible has been translated how many times? In how many languages? And the Apostles shared their word literally by walking about and talking to people.. and then the story was verbally passed down… a game of telephone, anyone?

Now that’s not to say that it’s all a lie, or that I don’t believe. I, personally believe that anything is possible until proven otherwise.. it makes life much more interesting. Thanks to scientists and archaeologists many events and people that are talked about in the Bible… both versions.. have been found to be true. So, then the question lies in, how did things happen.

On the history channel I saw a show on the science behind Moses’s miracles, and how because of certain flooding and iron draining into the sea it made the water look red, and how the locust happen through because of a weather change.. and so on.. so scientists say that they PROVED God didn’t do these things.. that science did. I say semantics.

A while ago I read Dan Brown’s book Origin. I don’t want to give any SPOILERS but in it one of the characters proves that there is no God because everything can be explained by computer code. There is a real life Theoretical Physicist who agrees and questions whether or not we really live in the Matrix because of it. But those that believe in God just say.. “ok, then who wrote the code?”. Just because things can be explained by science doesn’t mean that God didn’t use that science to create the universe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was interviewed about his belief in God and explained that he did not believe in isms.. much like Ferris Bueller. I agree with his logic. If I told you that I am a Christian then you would automatically assume certain things about me. If I explained that I am actually a Catholic it may change your thoughts a little.. I may seem more Democrat than Republican… If I said that I love to study Quantum Physics… that may throw a monkey wrench in yet another theory…. and there in lies the problem with vocabulary.

If you want to know who someone is don’t judge them based on who you think they are based on what you believe someone “like them” would, should, or could be. Talk to them… ask them what they believe, who they are, and what they feel. You’ll probably be surprised how much you have in common.