beliefs

 I was raised in the church; first methodist, then baptist, then "nondenominational christian"  (translation: evangelical full gospel, bible based, spirit filled).

By college, I was fully steeped in the mythos, then discovered that my questions resulted in "interventions" and prayers and talk of "possession versus just demonic attacks" for asking those questions.

I watched an adorable couple go from adorable to broken when the 20-something year old "elders" decided to exorcise the he of the couple from demons named "lust" and "perversion" by one of the "elders"--in front of the she of the couple--and everyone else.  The college age church, started by a professor that was evangelical, was a terrifying look at what a bunch of assholes a bunch of christian boys could be when given power over others.

I left.  I was angry---at that group, at the church, and at god.  

I finished school sans religion---joining the agnostics--i.e., who knows and who cares, got a job, partied, got married, had kids, got divorced and found that I needed to both know and care.

For over 10 years I read about the church, islam, the hebrews, the bible, the gnostics, the theosophy movement, the spiritualists, animists, wiccans, hindu (not one religion but rather a group of religions), the brahman, the buddhists, the taoists (one of my favorites) the satanists (know who loves going to satanism?  exchristians--the other religions don't actually believe in satan.) 

I read. I argued online. I read some more.  I finally purged myself of my childhood beliefs---a hard thing to do, but necessary to get rid of the cognitive dissonance that reading the bible caused me.    (I recently read it again, and couldn't believe that I ever found most of it believable as both history AND spiritual truth)

From that, I found I could start over and examine beliefs without the fear of hell or promise of heaven.  

Here is what I found.

I can call anything I want "god".  (ask any 12-step program and they will explain that to you) and so, when I say god, i am not speaking of an anthropomorphic being or a single entity at all.  I can call god by dozens of names or no name at all and it changes not one of my beliefs.

I do not try to separate science from spirituality, in fact, I have combined many of my spiritual beliefs into my scientific understanding of nature---and it's all nature, all natural.  

There is nothing supernatural.  If it seems supernatural, then science just hasn't figured it out yet.

The laws of god are the same as the laws of science.  All the controlling sin stuff is just that, control, external control.  No law of god can be broken.  (WHAT?  then what about sin?  what about hell?  don't get me started on hell)

There is no one and nothing outside of god--call it universal consciousness if you like.  The idea of some separate but not equal "evil" is a result of dualism (the idea that for everything their is an opposite---which works well for actions but not so much for god.  That means, good and evil are part of the same whole.  (and isn't perception pretty important in determining good and evil---i'm sure hitler thought the americans that ended WWII and stopped his eugenics wet-dream were seen as evil, well, to hitler)

If you want to know how you fit into the whole, the answer is---the same as everyone and everything else.  

Think energy. 

I'm sure you have seen the t-shirt about "we are stardust"?  Well what is stardust but atoms.  Big Atoms, small atoms,  just atoms.

And what are atoms made of?  Protons, neutrons and electrons and a whole lot of empty space.

So what are protons, neutrons and electrons made of???

energy.  Energy.  It's all just ENERGY---you, me, the food I ate, the air I breathe, JUST ENERGY!

We perceive things to be by our senses---but the things we see are just a narrow spectrum of visible light---we can not see most of the spectrum-- interacting with our retinas and sending messages to our brains.  The things we hear are sound waves interacting with our ears and being translated in our brains to sound, the things we smell are literally molecules stimulating the specialized cells in our noses and taste is similar, but we only taste sweet, sour, salty, bitter (and some have the imami thing),  And, then there is touch.  How is it that touch allows us to feel so many textures, temperatures, etc.  We are literally feeling the forces--of gravity, of electromagnetism, strong and weak, temperature indicating energy level.   Our senses detect these things and make things seem solid or liquid.  Hot or cold.  Heavy or light.  Bright or dark.  Our brains are translating energy so we can interact with it, recognize it, and work with it.

We are just energy--as is every other thing in the universe.  

So, what is this thing we call consciousness?????  

Is it really "I think, therefore I am"  Or is it present in every "particle" that exists.  Is consciousness the thing that keeps energy doing what it does, that makes a proton attract an electron, that decided what atom will be made, what rock, what one-celled organism, what person?

Humans and religion have long acted as if somehow early man knew god and then we forgot and we just need to go back to being early man.  Why would that be true?   

If we recognize our own consciousness and respect the consciousness of every other animate and inanimate object in the universe, we will act in a moral fashion. 

We don't need to inflict our rules on everyone and everything else.  We will stop raping and pillaging.  We will recognize the consciousness of everything that is being exactly what it is supposed to be.  

Truly, what most of us call consciousness is literally our own human narcissism.

You, and everything, exists because of consciousness (call it anything you want, it's a word, and frankly I don't know if words have energy or not)--and that creates the universal consciousness.  The Universe is learning--alive--evolving.  WE ARE PART OF THAT!

Happy holidays!

 

December 4, 2023

Holiday Greetings,

If you are getting this, you are important to me.  I hope you all understand that.  I also understand that doesn’t mean we are currently close.  The world is a little weird these days, or maybe only I am a little weird these days.  Only time will tell on that one.

It seems we all struggle—with money, work, relationships, health, and even with accepting that change is a constant.  I have always felt like the same person; the same child that worshipped my father and thought my mother was so beautiful and good, the same teenager that thought that I was going to grow into a beautiful and popular girl, the same young woman that just wanted a career and a family and a little picket fence.  Amazingly, I was also aware of who I actually was, a girl too nerdy and prone to loving solitude to be popular, too unusual looking to be traditionally pretty, too in love with telling my truth to ever be very politically correct.  I knew that when I was 7, I know that still.  But the hopes and dreams were as regular as any other person’s.  Don’t we all just dream of being happy and loved for who we are?  Are any of us really different than that? 

This year, I would wish upon a star, the north star, the star on top of the tree, a star cookie or a TV star or whatever star appears first to me, for peace---world peace, personal peace, the peace-of-mind of a baby sleeping in its parent’s arms, full and warm and safe. 

Peace. 

No angry words, no hurtful words, no jealousy, no fear of being hurt, no violence, no need to escape from pain, suffering, or hopelessness.  No war, either between nations or religions, or between individuals that just want to win, to be winners, to make someone else a loser.

Peace.

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. Wendell Berry 

Wishing you all love and peace, Debbie Giles

home

 Both my kids were at my house today.  They helped work on the greenhouse.  I've hurt myself a dozen times working on it;  it's making me feel old and incompetent.

But enough about that.

They were here, we sat a bit, visited a bit.

It was the first time both kids had been in the house I'm in now---the first time since the flood and the move.  I know I was sad to move and both of them talked about their childhood home going away.

It reminded me of my father's home place in Kentucky,  which may still be in the family, but none of the family that live there actually knew him or his kids.  Twenty-two years after his death,the relatives living there were not even born when he left the state.  It wasn't the original house, anyway, his brother and sister-in-law tore down the house he was raised in, a house from the mid-1800's, and built new in the late 1940's.

My grandmothers house is also still owned by family, and we still communicate in a minimal manner as we share the tax on a farm with an oil well left to three siblings.  My  uncle inherited the home place, but only lived 2 years longer than his mother, so his wife owns it with their boys.  No one is living there.  I assume someone is taking care of it.  The ridiculousness of poor people inheriting a bit of nothing made relations testy, plus politics made that even worse.  I would never dream of driving 3 hours to visit the home.  It might be too tragic if it has fell into a heap.

The home I was raised in was sold, my sister and I both were too deep into our own homes to try to keep it.  I can't drive past it anymore.  It was sold to a stranger  21 years ago and recently passed to the buyers daughter.  It is not my home.  I'm glad it has a family in it.

These homes of our childhoods hold a position in our hearts and memories.  After being in a space many hours, the reality of it becomes a home in our memories---I have been painting images from the views from those lost homes---some from photos, some from memories.  I'm not sure any of them will ever be done.  

But today, I realized something about home.  About both the homes I can't return to except in memory and the home I can provide.

As long as we can meet under a roof, we are home.  Eventually this old house will feel just like home.  My children have built homes for their families, but when we are together, we are back home as before.

As long as I live, we can share that.  I hope they realize that they will be doing the same for their children, even if they move.  The house is just a house, it takes on the spirit of those that share its walls.

Raised by a single parent

 I have been divorced for 34 years.

My children were very small at the time of the divorce.

A multitude of people have made comments about how hard my life was and how sorry they were that me and my children went through that.

I have never once complained about my post-divorce life or having to raise my children.  It was both an honor and a privilege.

As of 2015, about 27% of children in the USA were being raised by a single person---80% of those by a mother,  only 20% of those mothers are not employed.  

Before you decide that children of single mothers were financially disadvantaged:

• 16.7% of custodial single fathers and their children lived in poverty
• 29.2% of custodial single mothers and their children lived in poverty

So, while over 1 in 4 kids are raised in a single parent home, only about 1 in four children raised in a single parent home, are raised in poverty.  (that's about 1 in 16 children, 1/4th of 1/4th) (while 1 in 5 children of all children are raised in poverty.)

The USA has the largest percent of children raised by a single person.

• Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan was raised by his mother, May, after his father, Thomas Brosnan, left the family when the actor was an infant.
• Oprah Winfrey. Oprah Winfrey was raised by her grandmother for the first few years of her life, and then at the age of 6, she moved with her mother, Vernita ...
• Kelly Clarkson. Kelly Clarkson’s parents, Jeanne Ann and Stephen Michael Clarkson, divorced when the award-winning singer was 6 years old.
• 50 Cent. Growing up, 50 Cent didn’t know his father and he was raised by his mother, Sabrina, until she passed away when he was 8 years old.
• Samuel L. Jackson. Actor Samuel L. Jackson was an only child raised by his mother, Elizabeth, with the help of his grandparents and extended family.
• Mary J. Blige. Singer and actor Mary J. Blige was raised by her mother, Cora, after her father, Thomas Blige, left the family in the mid-1970s.
• Actress Halle Berry and her older sister, Heidi, were raised by their single mother, Judith Ann, after their father left when she was only 4 years old. 
• Jay-Z The mega-artist and his three siblings were raised in Brooklyn, New York, by his single mother, Gloria, after their father abandoned the family.
• Stephen Colbert was raised by his mother, Lorna, after his father, James, and two brothers, Peter and Paul, died in a plane crash in 1974 when Colbert was 10 years old.
• JK Rowling was raised by a single mother.
• Angelina Jolie
• Barack Obama
• Kanye West
• Mariah Carey
• Bill Clinton
• Jack Nicholson
• Tom Cruise
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Andrew Jackson
• George Washington

It's a long list.  Many nonfamous but successful people were raised by a single parent.  And plenty of people raised in the expected 2-parent family have turned out badly,  Just ask the Dahmiers about that.

My two are doing pretty well, 

I'm proud of them.

Stop saying "raised by a single parent" like it's a death sentence.

65

 I Just turned 65.  

I've had birthdays that seemed to mean something, 16 and driving and potentially dating, 21 and drinking and potentially finding a true love (though 16 year old hook on the same thing), 35 (it's usually 30, but at 30 I was pregnant and apparently that stopped other associations) where I suddenly realized that I was never going to get younger or be young or whatever.  It was so traumatizing that I couldn't remember how old I was going to be, telling people 37 or 32 or other things.  It's like I had a moment of dementia-like denial.  After that, 40 was nothing.

Fifty, on the other hand---half of 100, 2/3 of the years my mother had, I quit smoking, had a new grandbaby, took a day job with mostly desk work, that was a thing.  It's like the first half of my life was officially over, and I hadn't done all the things I wanted, but didn't really want to do them anymore, anyhow.  At least I could remember my age.

Sixty-five, though.

That is the gateway to old age.  

I retired at 62 to do something I loved instead of just stuff I was good at but hated.

I have painted and quilted and made things that are beautiful.

I also had the home I loved flood, sold it and bought a house for 45,000 dollars (probably overpriced, but it's paid for).  It now has 28 piers, new concrete in the garage and on the driveway (previously looked like someone broke two bags of gravel in the car space and the garage had pallets for floor, complete with termites), termite treatments, new kitchen cabinets and nice granite countertop--I save an intact bit of cabinetry and like it very much, the rest was pure survival, no one apparently ever cooked in the previous 94 years.

I'm awaiting the electrician for the garage, the house painter, and the roofer---the world is backed up, everyone has put what money they have into fixing their home--I guess that the pandemic made everyone a house-body.

After those three things, I'm painting the two bedrooms, redoing the bathroom complete with chandelier over a claw foot tub, and custom cabinets--should be cheap, the whole room is the size of a postage stamp.  Things were different in 1925.

But, this week, 65, 65, 65, it keeps rolling through my head.  I've wondered if I should have kept working.  I've wondered if I should have bought a RV and travelled--which is nuts--I hate travelling.  I've wondered how long I have left.  

That's the one.  Nothing screams mortality like 65. I can walk around looking like an overstuffed couch, bright blue eye shadow or no makeup, cut my own hair or put in 6 ponytails, wear tight clothes from the 1980's or gunnysacks,  it's all the same.  My appearance is off-limits.  

I'm officially old.  

Not ancient.

But plenty of folks never become ancient.

My next goal is to continue making stuff--art, crafts, home projects--until I'm ancient.  

I don't know what number will fit ancient yet---so far 100 sounds good but I know everyone's is different.

Happy birthday to me.

Selling the family home.

 It's been put off twice, but the closing is now next Monday.

The 2019 flood forced me to take a realistic look at the possibility of living 20+ years alone in my 60's-80's on 2 1/5 acres with lots of trees and never ending yardwork.  It forced me to consider why I needed to keep up a house that I frequently didn't even go into every room every week.

Reality is, if the survival in July and August with no air conditioning hadn't pushed me, I might still be there.

I raised my kids there.

I built my dreams there.

It was home---a feeling that doesn't happen in a minute but takes time.  I had been there 6 years before I realized it was home--not just the place I lived but the place that was home in my dreams.  

I moved out almost 2 years ago, and let a person needing a place stay there for the past year and a half since repairs were done.  He/they wanted it, but a pandemic is not that good a time for socking away savings and repairing credit.  When it became obvious that he/they couldn't buy it, I put it on the market.

It had 2 offers the first day.

A sales contract before the sign went up.

Life if weird.

But now, It's feeling both like it won't happen and like it's about to become like my grandmother's home and my parent's home---just a vague memory of something that may or may not have ever been real.

I've had a lump in my throat for days while trying hard to concentrate on finishing upgrades to the old house I bought for cash.

I may paint it many times.  I still haven't finished any of them.

So long, Home---Next chapter.

Anticipation of the end of good things.

 When I was small, I would sometimes go to bed thinking about the end.  Not some cataclysmic end, but the end of small things.  I frequently cried myself to sleep thinking about such things.  

Those small things, the end of staying at home all day with my mom because I had to start going to school; the end of sitting on adult laps; the end of my fish or the end of summer; the end of my 93 year old great grandfather that I barely knew and the end of the blue buick that was already over 10 years old.  I was a mournful child at bedtime.

I have gotten better at dealing with ends since then, but lately, I feel the coming of my ends.  Not death, precisely, but the looming end of such things as independence, strength of body, clarity of vision, steadiness of hand.  

I have jokingly referred to my 2012 car as my last car and the little home I bought as my "winter house", as I realize that I am retired, and unlikely to ever need to buy another of either.  Both of those are bittersweet, despite the fact that I am prone to staying with what I have forever unless some external circumstance necessitates an upgrade.  

Am I the only one that does this?

Maybe.