Hot button issues..let’s get some of those out of the way. COVID has taken the world. I guess that’s a big topic. It is in circles I’m in. First off, I’m vaccinated. Completed my Pfizer jabs in April. All went well. Completed my shingles series earlier this year. First one of those put me in the bed for about 2 weeks. I was really sick. Second-nothing. I have no problem with vaccines-I don’t understand the uproar-well, I understand it from a behavior point of view. I remember when the community received sugar cubes for polio. There is a story about social media for another day but my great uncle was a pharmacist. His brother was a medical doctor. So was his son. We take medicine pretty serious. Ppl I knew died from COVID last year..more this year. I’ve never seen medicine and science as political but rather common sense.
Politics I’m skipping for now. Moving on to weather. It’s getting cooler. It’s a nice change but I’m getting tired of hot weather and cold weather. I don’t have central heat or A/C any longer so it’s tough at times. This summer hasn’t been so bad. Last February I thought the cat and I would freeze to death. It wouldn’t warm up. There’s only so much 30-40 degree (F) high temps I can take with a space heater but we made it. Not sure how many more years I have. My memory is going and it won’t take much to get me down for good. Fell in the tub one night and kept thinking..what will the girls do when they find me days later? I made it out after some time but I made some changes. More on my health later.
And then we come to what I have been avoiding posting. For years I searched for meaning in life. I believed if I shared what was important to me that I would find others with similar quests – and answers. What I found wasn’t what I sought. I came from a background of love and inclusion – not this exclusion type of belief. I met ppl from all walks of life and various religious beliefs. It was the best thing that I could have been exposed to. I saw the goodness of others and the bad..I saw ppl posing as good who were really selfish and bigots..can I say that? I had a love of life and ppl. I wanted to share that with others. I was shocked at ppl on social media and in real life. Friends weren’t really friends. I had to learn to accept that and it was tough. By 2017, I was trying to rationalize my belief in a god of love compared to a god who would send ppl to an eternity of hell for lack of belief or they didn’t pray the right prayer or they weren’t baptized with the right amount of water or someone didn’t chant the right incantation at the right time or they didn’t give enough – tithe or gift – or their heart wasn’t pure enough or they just didn’t ask for forgiveness……and on and on. By 2018, I was trying to hang onto my faith by saying I believed in a universal god – that everyone was included in the eternity of the next life and not judged that their god was the wrong one. That didn’t last long and I knew it wouldn’t. I knew where I was headed. I didn’t want to let go but by end of 2018 I left my faith. I’ve needed to write about this for a long time. Ppl have asked me why and there are a lot of reasons but the biggest one was that my god – my god belief – just wasn’t big enough. That’s the simple truth of it. Today I am a humanist.
Something happened when I realized this. The conflict was over. I felt a weight lifted. I also felt that I had to give up everything to get to this point of peace and I do mean peace. It was the most energizing peace I have felt for the longest time. You see there was a thing about non belief that I began to admire and that is the good ppl do is genuine. There is no threat of hell or promise of heaven. It’s purely doing for one another. As I learned in my newfound belief or non belief I also realized I was living on faith but without faith. Now that sounds strange but you can actually hold on too tight. It’s not really faith. So when I left I felt I was living more like what I was supposed to be living as a Christian. I’ve lost friends because of this change and others have distanced themselves from me. It is what it is. There is way more about this I want to write but not now. I will have to add that all of the ppl who used to yell at me every day that I was going to hell when I was a Christian….well, that had an impact and so did the many ppl who judged others so harshly. I also learned that just as all theists are not alike — neither are atheists. I don’t fit in there either. So as usual I’m marching to the beat of my own drum – singing my own tune – and learning that isn’t such a bad thing. 🙂
Garden2day 
Interesting. I remember when I was 4 and I asked my mother why God needed our money every Sunday. It for God’s missionaries, so I asked why God didn’t just give them the money they needed. Because that was our duty. It was at that point I realized that Santa Clause was more powerful than God. I made the mistake of reading the KJV Bible from cover to cover when I was 12, and God (or was it an angel?) could only defeat Jacob in a prolonged wrestling match by cheating. And that He was incapable of warfare against iron chariots (Judges 1:19), ad nauseum. Then there was the sheer antinomy of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence (which are completely non-Biblical). Omnicuddliness, I might be able to understand. There’s much more, but it makes me wonder if Vishnu or Kokopelli might not be a little more consistent.
When Zocor hit me with all my auto-immune diseases, one of them left me always feeling cold, so my office is the smallest room in the house. I use a heater cranked up as high as it will go. I’m going to send a question into Quora asking what the climate is like in hell. According to a local Baptist minister, that’s where I should be able to meet most of my friends. Speaking of — you may want to Google Mister Deity.
Keep up your good work and have some fun.
I’ve had quite an interesting 3 years discussing many of the things in the bible with ppl who swear they know better than me and who claimed I was headed for hell – most say I was never a *real* believer. I guess I’ve always enjoyed playing devil’s advocate a bit much to prove my points. I just hope there is good barbecue and fine drink in the hereafter if I must live for eternity. Just don’t put me with the hypocrites. 😀 I’ll have to check it out.
When you got your Covid shot, did you notice that it was turning you into a magnet? The woman who made this awesome discovery should be up for a Nobel prize. Even with her publication of that fact, her medical license was renewed last week. I know it’s true, because now I attract hair any time a cat sits in my lap.
A friend of ours warned that vaccinated people can give babies blood clots and possibly kill then. I’m exercising caution, since it appeared on Facebook, so we know it’s true.
Have you noticed any unexplained side-effects? Maybe glowing in the dark? I had no idea how dangerous the vaccine is, and I thought all it did was prevent Covid. I went ahead with the booster, and now I have no idea how many people I may contaminate. If only I had been watching Tucker Carlson on Fox News!
Lol. I’ve watched those ppl try getting silverware to adhere to their skin and was like what cheap silverware do they think will attract a magnet? I waited to get better 5G reception-had to get more ppl vaccinated first. 😉 I follow a bunch of cultists on FB that tell ppl not to get vaccinated. An old boyfriend buys into all of that – had to have 5 bypasses and says Satan caused his blocked arteries. I could write a book about him. He just got over COVID *again* and has been telling ppl he is immune bc he has Jesus DNA. That was the first guy I almost married. Thank goodness I didn’t.