Dead For A Day

When i was younger I remember writing a lot of poetry to help cope with different things I was going through growing up. In one particular bad phase of life I wrote the beginning of a poem that went something like this:

"Sometimes I wonder

What it'd be like to die

To lay in a casket

And watch everyone cry

Sometimes I wonder

Who would be there

Who would pay their respects

Who really would care....."

I never wrote anything beyond that... I could never finish it

Yesterday, I lost one of my best friends

her husband lost his wife

her daughters lost their mom

and everyone she's touched has lost a light...

to suicide.

For as long as i've known her, She's been depressed. She'd been so sick for so long... none of us really took her threats seriously anymore- All we could do was listen, tell her everything was going to be alright and help her pull through it. None of us ever thought she'd be gone.

But she is.

She gave up.

After the initial shock wore off and the facebook posts began flowing in, all I could think was "I wish she could see this!!!"

For so long she felt unloved, unappreciated and completely alone. That no one acknowledged her efforts and, at the end of the day, that no one cared.

Then i thought- what a great, but completely fucked up, suicidal ideation treatment!

What if, for just one day, we were dead to the world? That rumor had it we were gone... That Our friends and our family- close and long lost- all came out of the woodwork and expressed their truest; deepest feelings? Sharing stories of ways we inspired them, ways we touched their lives, things they always admired, memories they'll always cherish.

How sad it is to think we hold onto these thoughts and  keep them to ourselves! How many unnecessarily lost lives may be saved if they knew the things we never say? What if all it took was that single message- that said, "i appreciate you, my life is forever changed/blessed/better because of you... and even if we never speak again... I'll always care about you."?

So as everyone begins making your New Years resolutions that you'll statistically fail miserably in the next 6 weeks... take a good look at your friends lists. Take 2 minutes to say a quick hello, share a thought, a memory or simply something you appreciate or admire about that person.... You never know what they're feeling... whats going on in their lives... or if the next morning they'll be gone.

Cherish life.

Happy New Year Everyone!

The UniGodiVerse

As most of you know, i've been struggling with 'faith' lately. Or- the belief in God in general. My whole life i questioned religion, never God- until I actually started reading the Bible (KJV- cover to cover.)

Its been an interesting adventure setting sail with no anchor to speak of. Opening my mind to other possibilites- learning from friends who have very different beliefs.

An interesting thought was posted on my facebook page recently with the question:

"What if you found out that the sun that warms us is the heart of a being... the planets were its organs... and we are the cells that make it possible?"

While sitting in church this last sunday I began to expound on this thought...

Science has proven that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Religion believes that our foundation- our very existence and purpose for life is for and by Jesus Christ- the son.

What if they were one and the same? If somewhere along the lines of translation someone changed the U to an O and personified the Sun of God to be the Son of God? That "God" itself/himself/herself really was someones interpretation of the universe- a way to mindfully grasp the sheer magnitude of something far too great to understand. Imagining a God as a human being such as ourselves is far easier to wrap our heads around than attempting to comprehend an all powerful; unforseen energy that created us from nothing with such biological perfection to intertwine us with everything around us for survival.

What if faith, the laws of attraction, the force, the energy we feel are really just our own individual ways of connecting with the Uni-God-iverse?

While sitting in church pondering these thoughts on Sunday, the teacher used very interesting wording in her lesson. she said, "Some people connect to their God through prayer, personally I connect to my God through song." It struck me that here we were as a congregation- all there for the 'same' purpose- purportedly believing in the same thing- yet we each connect to "our God" in different ways. Why is it that we as a religion all have our own God- not just connecting to "God"?

The scriptures, that so many people base their beliefs on, are really just compilations of journals and stories written by other people based on their own interpretation of experiences- a history book from one person's point of view as they lived it; as they saw it.. Think about how a simple translational mistake like writing a U as an O completely changes the way we perceive it today!

What if God really is just a personified explanation of the Universe?

What if we, as individuals, are all right? That we are all discovering and holding different pieces of the same puzzle...The Atheists and the Theists, Science and religion... both are simply looking at the same thing with different eyes.

Just as with science and research- some people are further along in their quest for knowledge than others.

Some people are satisfied with the simple answer: the one that shows ignorance is bliss- the answer that makes something as astronomical as a Universal coincidence, vibrating at a specific level and creating a perfect molecular harmony for us to evolve and survive as living beings, too complex to grasp- so they personify it as a human-shaped "God" and leave it at that.

Others want to understand more. This is how science and technology have evolved into what it is today- if we were all satisfied with the simple answer we's still be afraid of falling off the end of the earth, we wouldn't have electricity or telephones or any of the first world problems we enjoy, we would all just be content hunting and gathering in mud huts and loin clothes! So some people started with a foundational knowledge of a God, built on the foundations and moved on to search for higher knowledge and meaning.

Both groups however recognize that there is a force greater than us- that in the larger view- we are so indispensably small and insignificant. We're just the cells pumping the blood, delivering nutrients, fighting infection, carrying and oxygen to something/for something far greater than we'll ever be and more complicated for us to understand.

So God-Allah-Buddha-Jesus-Darwin! Can't we all just get along?! ;)