Where Tigers Belch

Have you ever thought about how you won the genetic lottery, out of one egg and 250 million sperm you got to be you? One sperm different, whoops your sister of brother got it.

So, here we are. Now we wonder what to do. “Why are we here?” We ask. “What’s my purpose?” I wrote a little story with that in mind.

I see that right now, Where Tigers Belch is available for free on Kindle Unlimited. (They choose when it is free. Otherwise, it costs $2.99.)

I revamped it and re-submitted it. It is titled Where Tigers Belch. That’s the spot where you find your purpose, your reason for being.

 Pretend you are in a bookstore, and you pull Where Tigers Belch down from a shelf and begin to read:

 

Introduction

 

You might have read Paulo Coelho's book, The Alchemist, where a shepherd boy begins a quest to find a treasure and something he calls his" Personal legend."

Here is another quest as a young college student sets off into the jungle to find her purpose and reason for being. And she declared it would be where the tiger's belch that she would find it.

Have you ever had one of those days where you felt off? You were out of sorts, irritable, thinking nothing was going right? You were mad at the world and mad that things weren't going according to plan. You were angry that you aren't further along on your enlightenment trail, wondering what enlightenment is anyway.

 You could search for years and never find that spot where the tiger belches, where you are calm and believe all's right with the world. It is the place where you feel invincible. 

I understand the gap. Best to back off. Go into your hut, nap, pet that baby cheetah on your bed, and listen to it purr. (I've heard that they have a purr like a lawnmower, and if they lick you, your skin will feel like it has been sanded.) Decide at that moment that you will be fresh tomorrow, and you are not going to push it today.

 I've decided that tomorrow I will take my backpack. I will add a few bottles of water and a couple of sandwiches and set off to find my destiny.

This is the purpose of Where the Tigers Belch. It is an investigation into finding our purpose and learning that we are magnificent beings on the road to greatness.

We're not on safari here, although I wish we were. We're here to find the spot that lights our fire. That's where the tiger belches. I could say sleep, lies down, or roars, but I like Abby's lyrical poem, so I'm saying, "Where it belches."

While in Africa, Martha Beck found herself in an awkward and dangerous place. She was between a Momma rhinoceros and her baby. Standing there looking at an animal the size of a Volkswagen bus, she experienced a strange phenomenon. She was frightened, yes, but she was also elated. She was at a place she had dreamed of since childhood, and at that moment, that rhinoceros represented her one true nature. She felt that, somehow, she had come face to face with her destiny. (Between a rhino and a hard place?)

Perhaps that rhino was a talisman for her, a representation of what she could become: big, strong, able to overcome obstacles, that thing that both scares us and elates us. We hope we live to tell of it when we find ourselves in that place.

Being at a spot where a tiger belch has a gentler ring than coming face-to-face with a rhino. The purpose is the same. However, which would you rather face, a wild tiger or a wild rhino?

I don't think we can take credit for all we have produced, for I believe in muses and divine intervention.  However, we can take credit for searching. I search for my figurative or literal spot, where the tiger belches.

 Come along for the hike.

 

Chapter 1

 

You might think I spent the night quivering in my debris hut, listening for the footfalls of wild animals.

I did.

I'm joking. I slept like a relaxed dog with all four paws in the air.

I was on a mission and wouldn't let a minor inconvenience stop me.

Ahead was the goal of my life.

I spent yesterday walking, but when a washed-out area of the path dropped me in an avalanche of mud, I slid downhill screaming and grasping at the vegetation alongside my slippery slide. My careening stopped short of a stream, thank heavens, for my hands were scraped and my throat dry from the screaming, but I survived to the tune of the screeching and flapping of a great flotilla of birds filling the sky in a paint brush smear as though I had touched the brush to every color on my palette.

I washed my hands in the stream and ate one of the tuna fish sandwiches I had placed in a plastic container to keep them from getting mushed. I drank my bottled water and gathered sticks and debris for an enclosure where I spent the night.  

 Now you might be waiting for me to fall on my nose, and I may—I slid down the muddy slope, didn't I? But what if we travel through life knowing it will turn out well for us?

I crawled out of my enclosure, stripped off my clothes, and bathed in the stream.

Figuring that the stream—which flowed at a pretty good clip—was pure, I filled my empty water bottles.

 And when I put the bottles into my backpack, I found a surprise. (Did I tell you I had lost my backpack on the way down that embankment and had to climb, holding onto vegetation for support, back up to get it? I slipped back down again--but I had saved my backpack.)  I had used this pack before and had left a pen and a paper pad in its zipped-up compartment—Good. I searched to see if I had anything else tucked away.

I found three sticks of gum, old and dried up, a chocolate mint from a restaurant long ago, melted, flattened, and re-set, but still in its foil wrapper. A few crumbs of left-over peanuts left salt in the bottom of the pack. I dipped a wet finger in the salt and licked my finger. It gave me the taste of having potato chips –a good after-taste to my tuna fish sandwich.

 Okay, dry, dressed, fed, and invigorated after that cold bath I began skipping down the new path.

 After that fall from the path above, I felt that destiny thrown me onto this path. Besides, following a stream leads somewhere. Water goes downhill, not in circles, as I am apt to do.

What if I get lost, I think as I walk along—a moment of doubt. What if I run out of food or get eaten by a tiger?  Well, I'd be dead. I don't know where I am now anyway. I might as well proceed. I'm determined.

I take off my tee shirt, dip it in the stream, and put it back on to cool my steaming body. I sit beside the stream, gather some reeds, and weave them into a ratty-looking hat. It protects my head, and the wet grass helps keep me at a tolerable temperature.

I keep walking; the sun beats down hot, and it is mucky under the forest's canopy.

 Occasionally a monkey screams at me, sometimes they sing in a full-on chorus of screeching, but I keep on.

 Another night in the jungle? What did I get myself into?

 Suddenly I hear someone humming.

 Am I coming upon an encampment?

I stop and hold my breath as I peer through the jungle thicket. I see only one hut.

Standing there where I am, hidden in the trees, I see an old woman come out of a shelter. Her white hair frizzes out in a tangle flowing down her back. She is wearing a sarong tied above her bosom. Her shoulders are bare. She ambles, carrying a jug to the stream where she dips it into the water. She hefts the filled jug out of the water and settles it on her hip.

 As she is walking back to her hut, she calls out to me. "Why are you standing there gawking? Come on in out of the heat. I've been expecting you."

End of excerpt.

 

To see "Where Tigers Belch" on Kindle, please Click.

 

Stacks and Miracles

 

This looks like the drafts for one manuscript.

However, this morning my desk looked more like this:

One of the advantages of cleaning a drawer—this was a file drawer where I had slipped in receipts through a slot I made by leaving the drawer slightly open is that I find something of value.

Surprise! A great accumulation of papers, receipts, car repairs, and health information were stacked up in a great pile inside the file drawer. The pile expanded when I took it inside the house to the dining room table. But surprise, surprise, I found a paper I was looking for, and while sorting through my stack, I found this:

From Desmond Tutu:

"We have to stop pulling people out of the water. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in."

Right on, I thought, remembering the conversation I watched some time ago of Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of South Africa, and The Dalai Lama. Those two clearly loved each other and were as mischievous as six-year-olds, teasing each other relentlessly while sharing their spiritual practices. At one point, one poked the other and said, "Act like a holy man." Tutu got the Dalai Lama to take communion, and you couldn't help but laugh when The Archbishop persuaded the Dalai Lama to dance.

The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, an advocate for civil rights, is married, has four children, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in anti-apartheid. In 2009, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1989, Tutu spoke out about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, asserting the right of the state of Israel to its territorial integrity and security against attacks by those who would deny its right to exist. And now, 35 years later, we still have that conflict. Sigh.

Yet those two spiritual friends, after what they had gone through, got together in a spirit of joy and colluded to write THE BOOK OF JOY: How to Find Joy in the face of suffering.

Well, I have to buy that one even though it costs 16 bucks on Kindle.

When Tutu asked the Dalai Lama how long he had been exiled, he answered 35 years, then added:  "There is a Tibetan is saying, "Whenever you have friends, that's your country, and whenever you receive love, that's your home."

Thanks for reading. Thus, I have a reason to write this blog, find that quote to give you, and find "The Book of Joy," which I intend to read.

You see, miracles happen every day. (And all the pages are in their own little file folder.)

My next to last chapter from Your Story Matters is here:

Chapter 59

 Aloha

Two months after moving to Hawaii, Little Boy Darling turned one year old on Ground Hog’s Day.

 

Neil was on the mainland completing a project, and the rest of the family, DD, Little Boy Darling, and I, decided to celebrate at the beach. 

 

The beaches on the Hilo side of the Big Island are rocky, so it is necessary to drive a distance to enjoy a sandy beach. We aimed toward Hilo, but instead of turning right, we turned left toward the town of Volcano and kept driving until we came to Punaluu, Black Sands Beach. 

 

There, the sand is black and worn round and smooth as caviar. It is where the Hawkbill sea turtles, giant as manhole covers and dressed like warriors in full battle regalia, sun themselves on the warm sand. 

 

The water is treacherous there, but DD went in until she felt the surge and decided that wasn't a good idea. In ancient times, the strong swimmers, the men, would dive down, holding an empty bottle covered with a finger. At a spot where fresh water enters the sea, they would remove their finger, allow the bottle to fill, and stop it up again. On the surface, they would offer fresh, cold water to the family.

 

Freshwater percolates through the sand there on the beach, and it was said that in ancient times, the turtles came there to help the children, for they dug troughs where the freshwater could collect. 

 

Someone had built up the sand to form ponds about six inches deep at the surf's edge. It was in the ponds that Little Boy Darling spent his day playing in the caviar sand, smearing it on his legs and tasting it occasionally.

 

As my daughter and her son were thus occupied, I wandered down the beach and found a lady sitting in the sand, searching for tiny white shells that could sometimes be found sparkling in the black sand. She was there also celebrating her birthday with her grown son and daughter from the mainland. As her children played in the water, the lady and I sat in the sand and visited.  

 

She said she and her husband used to come here and search for the tiny white shells. The one who found the smallest shell would choose the restaurant for their dinner. Six years ago, her husband came to the Island and bought a house, for it had been his dream to live there. Since she loved him, she agreed to move. However, it rained more than she could take; she couldn't find the items she wanted, she missed her family, and she would stand in the backyard and cry. Her husband said they would move if she was so unhappy. 

 

She decided that she would adjust, so she stayed, and now she won't leave even when the kids beg her to do it.

 

Her husband died two years ago, and a "friend" stole their money. She lives on Social Security, $700.00 a month, in their little paid-for house. She is happy. "It is ALOHA," she said. “Aloha is a way of life; look it up. It means to give without expecting anything in return." 

 

It also means, "Hello, Goodbye, and I love you.

 

Aloha,

 

From Jewell, Joyce, Jo

Be Happy

“And what would you do,” the Master said unto the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, “I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE,’ what would you do then?”

And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides across the valleys where they stood.”

--Richard Bach, Illusions

 

Don't you hate it sometimes when you're in a funk and some jovial little person comes along and says, "Be Happy?"

I was there until today.

Have you ever noticed that a foul mood brings more annoyances, irritations, and mistakes?

However, a happy mood usually brings good stuff.

Dr. Gabor Mate’ told of a time when he was an infant. His mother called the Pediatrician and said that little Gabor was crying all the time. The Pediatrician said that all the babies were crying. They are picking up the anxiety from their mothers. The Gabor's lived in Poland, and Germany was about to invade it.

That's the way I have been feeling for the past month.

I wrote a blog yesterday about what was on my mind, then lost what I had written. Was that a lesson regarding my foul mood?

Was that the universe telling me to either shut up or up my foul mood into a tinier fowl?

Once I fed some tiny quails for our landlord in California.  Have you ever seen their cute little spotted eggs? 

Our landlord sold the eggs to a Japanese restaurant, which considered them a delicacy. His little gathering of quails—a bevy is an old-world term for them—was so tame they would flow as a unit out of the enclosure, and I had to push them back in to close the door.  Later, he collected another group and housed them in a business structure on the property. Those young quails were so wild I couldn't open the cage to feed them without fear of losing one, and once I did.

The door to their cage was on top of a low container. When I lifted the on-top-of-the-cage door, an ace pilot quail flew out faster than a speeding bullet, aimed for the door to the great outdoors, and was never seen nor heard from again.

I never told the landlord.

What lesson is there in that story? I don't know—watch which door you open, I suppose.

Yesterday I closed a door on my Real Estate ability to sell. I'm keeping my license current, for I worked my butt off to get it. However, I am dropping my associations.  Fees are due and paying a considerable sum of money for something I don't want to do seemed ridiculous. I was following up on leads that my principal broker was buying and giving to me to call.

How do you feel about cold calls?

“Ok? Don’t bother me? I won’t answer. GO AWAY.”

Luckily nobody got really angry with me.  

I could call ours “lukewarm” for the person I called had filled out a form. I know they wanted information, probably not a call, but then I was playing the game.

No more.

I resent getting calls to sell me something. I figure most other people do too, and I don’t like to bug people. At least here you can read or not read, it’s your choice. Lead gathering headlines were something like this: “Downpayment Assistance, Cash Deal.”

Really? I was a Real Estate agent. Everybody knows that a Real Estate Agent can make a living only by commissions, which many people resent or try to lower. Calling irked me. My procrastination irked my boss.

I felt like a quitter.

But I quit anyway.

That means I cannot list a house for sale, help an owner sell, or help a buyer buy. Agents must belong to the RMLS and Realtor ®, for we are required to use their forms.

My time and efforts belong to what I am passionate about.

And that is writing.

I could continue the Newsletter concept I began when I created our website for Vibrance Real Estate LLC. Our mascot/logo was a Pink Flamingo—thus I titled the Newsletter A Flamboyance—which is a gathering of flamingos. (Those exuberant vocal, chattering birds are sometimes called the long-stemmed rose of birds.) It's odd that occasionally, we see that tropical bird, not indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, perched in someone’s yard.

People do want information. That’s the reason they signed a form to get it. Now if I could get them to sign up for a Newsletter I could do what I like to do and still be in the Real Estate business.  I could tell people about FHA loans, (low down payment, government-insured) or VA loans (no down payment). There are other loans like a bridge loan that will loan you money so you can bridge the gap between the time you sell your house and the time you purchase your dream home. (Once you find a house you love you don’t want to lose it before you can sell yours.) The Real Estate Association recently required a buyer to sign a buyer’s agency, so read carefully.

My daughter and I could give tips. Want a brainstorming session to make that oblong room look more inviting? Daughter dear and I once flipped a house where we touched about everything except the roof. We did siding, flooring, tiling, painting, carpentry and installing. A sledgehammer with my daughter’s muscle behind it bashed out a wall, opening the living room to the kitchen. We found a beautiful piece of Tiger wood” that made a bar to separate the two rooms. Daughter’s mantel over the kitchen range sold the house. (A single lady—first time buyer bought it, and we helped her find down payment help.) That was a thrill. We were not real estate agents at the time, but we still made a profit

I learned to use a table saw and make mitered corners. The worst of the flip was installing a garbage disposal. Well, hanging kitchen cupboards was no piece of cake. But we were proud of our accomplishment and loved the design aspect. Maybe that's what we can do. Have people send us pictures, and we will critique the house and offer ideas. Sometimes a little runt of a house can transform into a jewel.

When everybody wins business is simply more fun. (Aka, the Pink Flamingo.)

I General Contracted the building of our log house. That went from getting a forest Land Use permit, to building a road (hiring contractors) to the finished product—with a little help from another general contractor who took me under his wing, including taking me to the county to get a septic drain system permit.

(You know what a “French drain is? Ask me. You know about rock dust, and road fabric? Ask me.)

One of the fun things about writing is it clears the mind and sweeps the house so the muse can enter without soiling her gown.

 

Richard Bach, the author I quoted at the top of this blog wrote Jonathan Living Seagull. “A nice little book,” said Ray Bradbury. “It will probably sell about 15,000 copies.”  Jonathan was first published in 1970 with little advertising or expectations, by the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print. The book reached the number-one spot on bestseller lists mainly through word-of-mouth recommendations. It is about a seagull trying to learn about flying, personal reflection, freedom, and self-realization.

Bach's following book, Illusions, is my favorite book of Bach’s. Released in 1977, Illusions sold 15 million copies in 35 languages.

'What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? ... What if a Siddhartha came to our time with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he was flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?"

I'm going to reread Illusions.

 

And now for chapter 58 from my memoir Your Story Matters:

Prince Charming

I am reluctant to tell this; I don't know why I would suddenly feel hesitant, for I have written this story in a blog, and many have read it. However, now I admit in a book that I am often afraid to show myself.

Last night, Prince Charming, the name I gave the neighborhood peacock, was standing on the neighbor's roof across the street, squawking out that plaintive call that, if you didn't know better, you would think someone was being killed. It reminded me of the play Midsummer Night's Dream, performed at an outdoor theater in San Diego next to the Zoo. As though on cue, a peacock would squawk at appropriate moments. 

Prince Charming disappears each winter, slinking away with no tail. However, he appears strutting in the spring with that long, luxurious tail sweeping the ground. That makes it doubly surprising that he would be on our fence in December with a long tail.

Once upon a time—true story—my first daughter, then two years old, and I visited our newly purchased house in Riverside, California. I was planning minor repairs, as a College Fraternity had lived there, and the house had scars.

From the living room, I looked up into the clerestory windows and saw a peacock staring down at me. This was significant because not long before, I attended a self-hypnosis class where the instructor told us that we would find our totem animal. 

In my mind's eye, I followed the instructor's instructions to walk down a forest path. We continued until we came to a group of bushes. I knew my totem animal was hiding there, as I could see the rustling of vegetation.

"It's all right," I coaxed. "You can come out now." 

I expected to see a deer, A wolf, or a little fluffy animal. However, what came out was a total surprise. It was a peacock. A male peacock's tail furled out in all its glory. 

Not long after, in my mind's eye, I revisited my peacock in the bushes and asked why he stayed hidden.

"Because here, I am the only peacock."

Fast forward many years.

As we were preparing to build our Log Home in Oregon. Neil and I were walking the dirt road that abutted the property when we saw a male peacock running with some wild turkeys. A peacock in the forest?

More years passed, and we bought our present house; you know that story. When I saw that peacock out the window sitting on our back fence, I ran around like a crazy person, calling my dog Sweetpea to come look.

I didn't know we had a neighborhood peacock. Neither did I know that in Riverside, our house was located up a hill from the park where the Peacock supposedly lived, but he liked our roof better. 

I thought our present neighborhood peacock had come just for me, and in a way, he did. He came onto our property and sat on our fence on a day when only Sweetpea and I were in the house. 

As my imaginary peacock didn't want to compete with other peacocks, I think the real peacock tells me the same.

Time to put myself out there.

I'm dense. I must be told three times. 

 

 

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive."

 --Howard Thurman

Let’s go Fly a Kite

 

“When you send it flying up there, all at once you’re lighter than air…” 

--Richard and Robert Sherman 

My daughter and I watched Mary Poppins a couple of nights ago. That was after we watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” how Walt Disney persuaded P.L. Travis the author of Mary Poppins to allow him to make the movie.

Neglected kids had a magical nanny come to take them on outings, play games, never be cross or cruel, never give them castor oil or gruel and never smell of barley water…. They got to laugh on the ceiling, jump in and out of chalk drawings, and Mary Poppins, instead of allowing Mr. Banks to fire her, tricks him into taking this children, Jane and Michael, on an outing to the bank where he works.  The father, George Banks, gives Michael, his son, a Tuppens to start a bank account.

On the walk to the Bank, Michael sees the old Bird Lady at the Cathedral and wants to spend his Tuppens to feed the birds as the old Bird Woman pleads. Instead, he is dragged along reluctantly to the bank.

The bank wants the money, the Tuppens. They want it enough to grab it from the boy’s hand. In the tussle, noise and confusion there is a run on the bank.  

Any reference here to us?

The movie was about saving Mr. Banks, about personal crisis and redemption. It takes Travis’ tragic childhood and writes a happy ending to it.

 The healing value of Art.

When you don’t know what to say, say a nonsense word like  "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Take a sad story and write a happy ending.

And go fly a kite.

 

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,”

Jo

 

I took my book Your Story Matters off my blogs and decommissioned it. That is removed it from Amazon. It will come out as a new version.

 

 

However, you can read Chapter 57 here:

Art is Anything You Can Get Away With*

*Andy Walhol

Although I look back and see the beautiful scenes of my life, and I was an obedient child, I never gave my folks any problems that I know of, yet I carried a lingering sadness. And I would come home from school every day with a headache. My body was telling me something.

 

One day, later on—after I was married, I said, "The headaches are gone."

 

I could say I have a problem with low blood sugar, and I know that all through high school, I would leave the house with little on my stomach and probably little protein. At around twelve, when I was about to have my tonsils removed, they found I was anemic. 

 

Yes, they removed tonsils in those days—I remember waking up with a throat that felt ripped, and I thought the nurse who kept telling me not to roll over on my back was my mother. My mother was there, though. And that sage doctor and parent’s ploy trying to cover the hurt with ice cream is a crock of bull. 

 

By taking away my tonsils, they took away my defense mechanism, for after that, I got strep throat and had to guard against getting it every winter.

 

But back to the headaches. How much was physical, and how much was psychological? 

 

We can paint rosy pictures of our lives, remembering the good times and the highlights, or we can dig deeper and say, "What was bothering a child that she would have a headache every day?"

 

I didn't dwell on things. I put my love on the animals. I did wonder if my father ever thought of me. Grandma was gone. Tiny was gone. It appeared as though that didn't matter.

 

It mattered.

 

Mike molested me.

 

It mattered. 

 

Sometimes, it is as simple as that. Acknowledging that it mattered. 

 

Your Story Matters.

 

We lived in the town of The Dalles for about a year and a half, and I remember that as good. I played with the neighbor kids and the little boy next door and went fishing in Mill Creek, near our house. 

 

The day I caught a two-inch fish and ran home all excited, I stopped short when I found my Aunt Marie from Illinois there. Dear Marie. I loved her. Mom was a bit embarrassed for Marie to see that I was such a tomboy, which surprised me, for Mom was not a girly girl. Tomboy isn’t a word we use anymore. But then there was an issue with a girl wanting to do what I wanted. I wanted to ride bikes, play with toy cars in the dirt with the boys, and read comic books. But then, didn't everybody? 

 

I loved being a tomboy. But did it bother me?

 

Yes.

 

Within that first year after leaving Illinois, we got the dog mom promised. Somebody shot it while he was still an adolescent pup because it reared up on his rabbit hutch. I was home and off my feet because I had gotten stitches in my ankle from a teeter totter swinging into my ankle as I was on the swing. This was a collision on a swing set in someone’s back yard.  The kids from the neighborhood ran to tell me that Mike had hit the dog in the head with a hammer to put it out of its misery. 

 

I know Mike did what he thought was right because he didn't harm the animals.

 

It was a year or so later that I got Silver. 

 

I became friends with a little girl from a Catholic school whose parents were both doctors. A woman doctor of her age was rare as she was quite a bit older than my mother. But I thought those doctors must be a bit cuckoo, for their son, younger than the girl, had ulcers. Mrs. Doctor wanted her kids to have the same birthday, so she had a cesarean section with her son. And I wondered why both parents made such a fuss if one of their kids was injured in the slightest way. 

 

They weren't Catholic but thought the Catholic school was the best in town, and thus sent their kids there.

 

My mother got a job cleaning Mrs. Doctor’s house. Once, they took us to an island for summer vacation. I often went home with the girl after school—we were both in the second or third grade. When they served a meal, they used more than one fork. However, often, when I went home with the girl, her mother would fuss at her to practice the piano. I loved piano music, but I thought if that's the way it is, I'm not taking piano lessons.

 

Later in life, I met the girl at a high school reunion. The Catholic kids transferred to The Dalles High when they reached high school age, but we had not seen each other since the fourth grade, and in high school, we hardly knew each other existed. Had she not introduced herself, I wouldn't have recognized her—a Burnette had become a blond-that’s common, but her entire countenance had changed. The last I heard she lives on a Hog farm. Fascinating. Who would have thought? And she seems to be someone I would like to get to know.

 

When I was in the fourth grade, we moved from the town to a more rural area called Chenowith. I rode the bus to Catholic school for a year. There are nearly always some comments, however small, against the new, the strange, the different, and there I was a Catholic in a pack of Protestants.

 

I’m sure the same would happen the other way around.

 

After the fourth grade, I joined the Chenowith public school and soon joined the Protestant church.

 

I was an only child, which was okay; I like time alone. And I like having friends. And I had Silver.

 

Once we joined the Protestant church, it occupied many hours each week. There was church service on Sunday mornings and youth meetings at night. I joined the choir, and we had a Wednesday night choir practice. I met my first boyfriend at church and my future husband there. 

 

Changing churches felt much like moving from Horace Mann to a Catholic School. I felt as out of place in Sunday School as I did in Catholic school. I didn’t know the books of the Bible and couldn’t recite verses as the other kids did. Odd, that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, to quote my mother, but it shows how we want to fit in and feel left out when others are more advanced in some subject.

 

I went to church camps and sat at a camp meeting, doubting that there was a God. And I wondered about all the "true believers" and how believing seemed so easy for them. I couldn’t mix the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the loving God of the new, and why did people attempt to mesh the two? Jesus clearly stated that he came to put aside the law.  I thought those people never doubted. I wondered what happened to the miracles.  And why couldn’t I be as sure as the true believers appeared to be?

 

I saw Billy Graham in a tent meeting once when I was Catholic and thought he was full of it. Later, as a Protestant, I saw him again. At that time, I thought he was arrogant because he said he knew he was going to heaven. I'm sorry, Mr. Graham. I believe you were a nice man. I just couldn't stomach some of the religious aspects. 

 

But I set off to find God and found that he/she lives in all of us. How we express that concept is up to us. Finding people with whom you can agree, discuss, and have a great relationship is fine and dandy; if not, travel your own road.

 

Almost everyone could go over their childhood, and each would have different experiences but with similar wonderings, longings, disappointments, and questions. We were, after all, babes in the woods. Looking back, I can see why so many feel different or left out, as though they don’t fit. I was a country girl in a sea of professional people’s daughters. Those girls shopped at Williams Store, the upscale one, while we shopped at Penny’s. And I could tell the difference. Isn’t it strange that that matters?

 

A great number of people now take antidepressants—like one-third of the American population. Why?

 

We have friends, a couple, who used to work at an Elder Facility. They told us that the same cliques occur there as they did in high school. That reminds me of a refrain I often heard at The World Healing Center, “If you don’t work on yourself, as you get older, you get worse.”

 

We have yet to learn that a smorgasbord of life is laid out for us, and we must choose what we want on our plate. We think something on the smorgasbord is going to jump onto our plates, when in truth, we must pick it up and place it there. Leave that liver, which I can’t abide, for someone else.

 

How can I say you are good enough? How can I tell people they aren't broken and need to be fixed? 

 

Experiences come and go; happiness comes and goes. We search for meaning, fulfillment, and our place in the world.

 

You might have noticed that I do not have much written about how to change your life or how to become a Baddass. (read Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badda**) 

 

I want to offer a tease to say, yep, the world is out there for you to grab. Take a chance. It’s possible. Go find a way. 

 

Once you declare that you want to achieve something, believe it’s yours, and take action to get it, you will be amazed at how the universe fills in the blanks. God, the great Spirit, the Force, the Source, the Universe, you name it, has your back. 

 

But there’s a glitch. You don’t just sit on the couch, yawn, and wait for magic to drop. You need to ask for what you want, believe it is possible, and start walking, driving, rowing, flying, whatever moves you.

 

 

Andy Warhol said, "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

 

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.”
― Richard Bach