Book of Eli packs surprises

We went to see the movie, The Book of Eli, yesterday, and were pleasantly surprised.  We had expected it to be another Mad Max type full of violence and human degradation.  I don't usually like futuristic movies that depict such a horrible future for mankind since I think God has more control over our world than that, but we went anyway.

It had moments of violence but wasn't too gory, and Densel Washington is always enjoyable to watch.  In fact, one big fight was a silhouette of the fighters, and supposedly, Densel did his own fight scenes.

What I liked about the movie was the good v. evil conflict:  spirit v. ego, God v. Satan, righteousness v. animalistic tendancies.  The story began with the wandering of Eli heading west, proclaiming he had heard a voice in his head to do this, and he was following the voice's instruction, believing this voice to be God.  He had a mission to protect a very important book, which he did against many trials and tribulations.  He met a myriad of nasty people who had no inkling of humanity, but Densel was able to fight them all off and proceed on his quest. 

Along the way, he met a young girl who escaped her situation and followed Eli, learning from him along the way.  This whole story may seem to be quite predictable, but the surprises in it fooled us, and we are very good at anticipating and guessing outcomes of movies.  We totally missed this one, and we walked out of the theater actually feeling good and talking about it.  That's how Chuck and I judge movies:  if it is memorable enough to talk about it afterwards and if it makes us feel good, then we consider it to be a good movie.

I'm not going to give away any more.  What I've written you can view on the trailer, but this is one movie that I highly recommend seeing.  It was an excellent story line with, obviously, top of the line acting.

Tiger Woods should "Find Jesus"?

Britt Hume flabbergasted me with his diatribe about how it would benefit Tiger Woods to "find Jesus".  I had always respected Mr. Hume as being an intelligent and well-versed member of the press corps.  What does it mean when he says Tiger should "find Jesus" and he will be cured of all his ills?  Methinks he misstates the reality of this statement.  If he means that Tiger Woods should turn away from his religion and become a member of Mr. Hume's church in order to "be saved", then the newsman is more intolerant than I thought and is spreading dangerous thinking.

It's true that a person will shine with the Christ Light if he or she has "found Jesus", but when a fundamentalist thinker uses this term, it can lead to big problems.  This is where the trouble comes from with Islamic terrorists:  intolerance and ignorance about a certain religion.  The God that I know and worship never commands and never condemns his children.  What kind of a God would that be?  Certainly not one I would want to worship.

Finding Jesus, to me, means turning within and finding the Kingdom of Heaven within us, as Jesus taught.  This inner light will open up to us as the Christ Light inside all of us and, if we allow it, will shine forth to everyone.  Because darkness hates the light, evil hates goodness, etc., the person who has opened up to this Christ Light within will only want to do loving acts.  I can't talk for Mr. Hume, but I suspect that when he says this about Tiger Woods, he is intending for Tiger to start going to a Christian church, where he will be led to accepting Christ as his savior.  This would be a great start, but everyone in all religions can find the Christ Light, the God Consciousness within them without denouncing their own religion.  God is in all of us, not just certain people who attend various churches.

This is my reality, and I'm sticking to it.

Why did God create flies to bug us?

The last few days, we have been experiencing Indian summer here in Cleveland, a rarity for us in November, and my attempts at concentration have been impeded by the inane bumping of flies across the windows.  Where they came from in these few days of balmy weather and warming sunshine I have no idea.  I hate flies in the house, and one thought led to another until I began to wonder why God has plagued us with the bombardment of flies.

They are not pretty. I suppose they are a part of the food chain, but they spread disease to humans if we allow them to land on our food and then eat or drink it.  Diseases like Giardia and Typhoid have been found on them, and I can think of absolutely no useful purpose for them.  So I wondered, and my thoughts turned to the duality of good and evil.

Did God create the evil in our world?  I am no expert, but I have spent a lifetime wondering about such things as why "Bad things happen to good people", etc.  Sometimes this can be explained by the Law of Karma, but I think the fly question can be answered by the need for us to experience duality:  where there's light, there's dark; where there's love, there's hate; where there's beauty, there's ugliness.  If it weren't for this duality of good and evil, we would have no clue which one is which.  It might refer to the balancing act of neutrons, protons and electrons since the world is vibration.   Evil has to balance out good and we need to experience both in order to make a free choice, which God has given us to learn from.

Because we have the beauty of Butterflies and Praying Mantis, I suppose we have to put up also with the ugliness of mosquitoes and flies.  I'm sure that Entomologists find beauty in all their bugs, but I can't see it in flies, so this is how I explain it.

This is my reality, and I'm sticking to it.

The beginning of my spiritual quest and interest in writing

      I have had a life-long interest in writing and, in fact, taught composition and creative writing to high school seniors for 16 years before moving to French. During my years as a high school teacher, I completed one book which is shelved for various reasons, and I have been published in a magazine and newspapers. Since my retirement, my desired focus is to write metaphysical/spiritual fiction and non-fiction which is geared to the adolescent reader. During my years of teaching, I noticed a hunger on the part of teens for something more spiritual than society is providing them, and my studies in Metaphysics and my own experiences are both conducive to helping to satisfy this hunger.

       My first experience with death began my spiritual quest.  Long ago, I had a puppy who was undoubtedly the ugliest thing on the planet. She had long, gangly legs with white boots, and her coat was a mottled brown with tan and white speckles. I don’t remember where we got her, but I named her Bootsie, and she and I became inseparable. I loved that dog.

      From day one, Bootsie never had difficulty finding trouble, or it found her, and my Dad was unforgiving. Many times we had to run and hide from his wrath when he discovered an overturned garbage can or holes dug in the yard. Maybe our bond was because I was such a loner as a child and felt out of sorts with everyone, or maybe we were just kindred spirits searching for love and acceptance. I’ll never know. I just know that I loved Bootsie more than anything else on the planet.

       The night Bootsie didn’t come home was one of the worst of my young life. I stayed awake all night talking to God, pleading with Him to bring her home to me, but He either wasn’t listening or just didn’t care about my ugly dog because I never saw her again. My Dad found her smashed on the road in front of our house and buried her before I could even say good-bye, and I can remember looking at the blood stains in the road and crying with such a broken heart that I thought the pain would never end. That night, I just lay on the couch sobbing and crying my eyes out.  My heart was breaking, but I hid it from everyone.

       The next day, I sat in front of Bootsie’s rough grave and just talked to her, crying, when I suddenly thought that, maybe, she wasn’t really dead after all. I grabbed a stick and began to dig frantically to unearth my friend and companion. After digging a couple of inches, though, something made me stop. I still don’t know what it was:  maybe the fear of seeing a lifeless body where my Bootsie had been, or the fear of Dad finding out what I had done, or maybe my Guardian Angel was sending messages to me to stop. I quit digging and, for some reason, felt my heart ache subside. I continued with my life, thinking about Bootsie often and where she was, and this was when I really began to think about life on the the other side.