I love that there are people like Erich Vieth\u00a0in the world, people who take the time to refute dangerous “fact” spouters like the Creationists who got themselves powered up to the top of the Google listings for vestigial organs.\u00a0 I love that he researches so thoroughly and carefully points out the enormous flaws in what passes for logic in the world of the fanatical faithful.\u00a0 They need to be pointed out, those flaws.\u00a0 Because in recent years, their voices have become very, very loud.\u00a0 And often, unfortunately, loud wins.\u00a0 Especially when loud is accompanied by legislation, or worse, explosives.<\/p>\n
Seems fanatics, whether they be Christian, Muslim or otherwise, are dead-set on yelling the loudest and therefore claiming victory.\u00a0 It pains me.\u00a0 It obviously pains lots of people; even most flocks of the faithful can see that anything carried too far becomes dangerous.\u00a0 People like Erich,\u00a0or Al Franken, say,\u00a0do good work.\u00a0 I applaud them.<\/p>\n
I, on the other hand,\u00a0might be more likely\u00a0to just cover my ears and say “la-la-la-la-LA-I-CAN’T-HEAR<\/strong>-YOU!”<\/p>\n Yeah, yeah, I know, not particularly effective in the battle against ignorance.\u00a0 It’s just that I get soooo tired of it.\u00a0 Of the fighting, of the rhetoric, of the nonsense that parades as so much\u00a0religion and the often arrogant verbosity working to knock down the many points of faith, one at a time, but not being heard because, after all, if you believe, you don’t need proof.\u00a0 Or un-proof, as it were.<\/p>\n I happen to believe every bit of scientic, evolutionary evidence out there.\u00a0 I believe there is a scientific explanation for everything that happens, or has happened, since the beginning of the universe, and I believe that science has proven that much of what Bible-thumpers tout as fact simply isn’t.\u00a0 Parables, fables, stories with valuable lessons, attempts at understanding what could not once be understood – but not fact.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trouble is, I also believe we have yet to understand most of what makes the universe tick.\u00a0 I believe we have a fairly great understanding of the stuff.\u00a0 What we don’t understand is the power behind it all, behind us, the most complex creatures we’ve found thus far.\u00a0 I can still be filled with a sense of wonder at what I don’t understand, and I still believe in God.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hmmm.\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 My version of God doesn’t fit any religious version of God I’ve read about thus far.\u00a0\u00a0Mine is, I guess,\u00a0a bit more like a science fiction God, a force, if you will.\u00a0 THE force, I guess.\u00a0 And The Force is, as Luke (Skywalker AND Apostle) learned long ago, very powerful.\u00a0 Omniscient, you might say.\u00a0 Not particularly meddlesome, however.\u00a0 Not terribly concerned with our everyday details, but sometimes able to be pulled toward need by the power of prayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Right.\u00a0 Science, and prayer.\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 What the hell is she talking about??\u00a0 Yeah, well, I’ve been asked that before.<\/p>\n And I’ve never done a particularly good job of explaining it.\u00a0 I’ll try again.\u00a0 Feel free to knock it down, point by point.\u00a0 Feel free to call me blasphemous.\u00a0 It won’t hurt me, because I don’t just believe it, I feel it.\u00a0 I feel it imbedded in a bedrock of faith, a bedrock built over many years of questioning and learning and watching and experiencing . . . and seeing, in my own mind’s eye, proof positive that what I believe is real.\u00a0 And none of what I believe can be disproven, at least not at this place in time.<\/p>\n OK, here goes.\u00a0 My version of religion.\u00a0 Nah, not religion.\u00a0 Let’s just call it “what Mindy has faith in,” and leave it at that.<\/p>\n We are all connected at the soul, every one of us.\u00a0 We are much more than our individual selves; we are all part of this force – call it cosmic energy, call it God, call it our collective soul or spirit.\u00a0 Each of us is the embodiment of a soul, a part of this one gigantic spirit.\u00a0 I happen to believe we all live through many lifetimes,\u00a0reincarnation, if you will.\u00a0 I believe that in each one we learn more, tiny parcels at a time, about what life really is all about and what part we play in it.\u00a0 Who knows who I was before or who I might be next time – I’m not\u00a0consciously\u00a0aware of such a thing, but what I believe will happen is that my next lifetime will be rich with lessons I didn’t learn this time and concepts I have yet to grasp.\u00a0 I won’t be able to explain them any more than I can explain much of what has transpired thus far in this lifetime.\u00a0 But I’ll learn.\u00a0 I’ll be enriched.\u00a0 I’ll be challenged, and if I survive, I’ll be wiser than I was before.\u00a0<\/p>\n I believe in the concept of some children being “old souls.”\u00a0\u00a0Some of us have been around the block many times.\u00a0 We\u00a0have a better handle, even as children, on how to achieve peace.\u00a0 Some of us, though,\u00a0have a steeper learning curve than others.\u00a0\u00a0 I believe that when one commits heinous wrongs against others in a lifetime and fails to make them right, one will fall victim to the same sort of pain next time around.\u00a0 Then one might learn.\u00a0<\/p>\n A caveat –\u00a0I don’t believe that every bad thing that happens is some cosmic punishment for a wrong in a former life.\u00a0 Sometimes, bad stuff just happens.\u00a0 Like accidents.\u00a0 Blame cannot always be laid.\u00a0 Hard concept to grasp in this litigious society of ours, but true, nonetheless.<\/em><\/p>\n We haven’t begun to understand the power of this force, although we’ve seen glimpses of it.\u00a0 Very few of us have not read of unexplained medical miracles, say, that seem to make no scientific sense.\u00a0 A life-threatening tumor, for example, vanishes when the bearer is prayed for by hundreds if not thousands of people, all focusing their prayer – their POSITIVE ENERGY and HOPE – on that one tumor in that one person.\u00a0<\/p>\n It doesn’t always work, of course.\u00a0 Many who are prayed for still die.\u00a0 I’m not sure I\u00a0believe that “everything happens for a reason;”\u00a0I think\u00a0that is a platitude we throw out when we have no idea how to soothe\u00a0someone’s broken heart.\u00a0 What I do believe is that with every passing, every tragedy, every challenge we face, we are handed the opportunity to make\u00a0choices that will determine our paths, and I strongly believe that we are often aided in those choices by those we’ve lost, or perhaps by those we knew in other lifetimes, long ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yeah, yeah, I hear you.\u00a0 Now she’s just lost it.\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n That’s OK.\u00a0 You can think that.<\/p>\n But I don’t.\u00a0 Because every choice we make affects all of those who love us still, and so forth and so on in a huge complex intertwining of lives and emotions, I believe that the souls of loved ones lost intervene on behalf of those they love, or miss, or know need help.\u00a0 They turn our heads and show us new perspectives, they send us in new directions, give us courage we never knew we had, or\u00a0pop ideas into our heads – you’ve had flashes of brilliance seemingly from\u00a0nowhere, right, that tilted your life\u00a0on its ear?<\/p>\n Sounds bizarre, I know.\u00a0 It’s much clearer in hindsight.\u00a0 Looking back over my life, I\u00a0easily see a series of major events, both joyful and tragic, that together led me\u00a0to exactly this spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n I am the mother of two daughters, neither of whom were born to me, yet we found each other.\u00a0 Our connections and the impact we’ve had on each other’s lives is profound.\u00a0 I doubt anyone could convince me that I wasn’t meant, through the ages, to be their mother.\u00a0 Sure, you can try.\u00a0 But I already know, in my deepest heart of hearts, the truth.\u00a0 Our truth.\u00a0 I can’t prove it to you, and you can’t unprove it to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Nothing can be proven until we are among those souls, free of our corporeal selves and filled with the knowledge of the\u00a0universe that\u00a0we now can’t\u00a0begin to fathom.\u00a0 Until then, my faith gives me my truth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If you could prove to me otherwise, that these girls are my daughters only by an accident of paperwork, then my bedrock of faith would crack and I’d have to rethink what I believe.\u00a0 But you can’t.\u00a0 Any more than I can prove it is so.\u00a0<\/p>\n While I don’t understand the kind of “faith” that flies in the face of what has been scientifically proven or is based on hurting others to further a cause, any cause,\u00a0I do understand believing without seeing, and I do understand that life is richer because of it.\u00a0 What I believe *is* possible, even if it cannot be proven.\u00a0 And even though I believe it is true, I fully understand and accept that many don’t, many won’t.\u00a0<\/p>\n I was married to a wonderful\u00a0man but am no longer, although he remains a friend and the adored father of my girls.\u00a0 I have dear friends I’ve met through a wide array of places and connections, I have a wonderful family.\u00a0 I am in love with a phenomenal man.\u00a0 Looking back, I can almost see the moments when someone’s soul, knowing ever so much more than I did, intervened.\u00a0 Sent me in a direction of which I was terribly unsure, but which ultimately brought me the greatest joys in my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those knowing scientific cynics will quickly write off these moments as coincidences, interesting perhaps, but meaningless.\u00a0 And since I have no proof, I bow to their cynicism and allow that they may very well be right.\u00a0 But I don’t think so.\u00a0<\/p>\n I saw my oldest daughter’s tiny\u00a0face for the\u00a0first time on the very day, actually moments before, I received the phone call telling me that our final attempt at creating a biological child had failed, my sister\u00a0had miscarried our implanted embryos.\u00a0 Now,\u00a0of course, I look back on that\u00a0in wonder at all that\u00a0transpired.\u00a0 I wonder why on earth we\u00a0tried so hard to create that child when our daughters were just waiting for us on the other side of the world,\u00a0but I realize that it\u00a0had much to do with\u00a0solidifying the relationship between my sister and\u00a0me, and with the timing of our adoption.\u00a0 We\u00a0had to be ready to go overseas when *our* daughter was ready.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I learned that the exact dates of many of the events leading up to that adoption coincided exactly with enormously significant dates in the life of the man with whom I’ve fallen in love,\u00a0something I never expected in a million years, the significance we’ll play in each other’s lives was confirmed for me.\u00a0\u00a0Time will tell exactly\u00a0how\u00a0that will play out, but I have no doubt that we will always be connected, always important to each other.<\/p>\n So.\u00a0 There it is, my soul\u00a0laid bare.\u00a0 Laugh if you must, shake your head and call me\u00a0loony.\u00a0<\/p>\n I, however, will continue to\u00a0find great peace in my beliefs, and\u00a0because of them, I will continue striving to\u00a0live by the Golden Rule I learned as a little child.\u00a0 I will try to treat others as I hope to be treated myself, and in doing so, continue to pray for the day when each and every living soul chooses to do the same – regardless of\u00a0upbringing or gender or religion or birthplace or job\u00a0or choice of partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, throw something at me.\u00a0 Ask me how X and Y and Q could possibly fit my bizarre version of God.\u00a0 I’ll do my best to\u00a0answer.\u00a0 OR, I might just learn something I didn’t know.\u00a0<\/p>\n The older I get, the more of that I realize is out there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Go figure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love that there are people like Erich Vieth\u00a0in the world, people who take the time to refute dangerous “fact” spouters like the Creationists who got themselves powered up to the top of the Google listings for vestigial organs.\u00a0 I love that he researches so thoroughly and carefully points out the enormous flaws in what 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