A Fancy or a Feeling?

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If there were no God, there would be no Atheists. ~G.K. Chesterton

So I was talking to a friend the other day about God.

This friend is kind of wishy-washy about religion and actually professes to be leaning towards atheism. By the way, this friend was not Teachinfourth – just in case ya'll were wondering after his searching for God post awhile back -although we have spent a fair amount of time sorting through faith,belief and other such ethereal topics. Anyway this mostly atheist friend was trying to explain why believing in God just doesn’t make any sense to him. He believes that people just use God as an excuse to explain whatever coincidence they want to explain. He is an atheist on logical grounds – there is just no proof that God isn’t just a figment of mankind’s imagination.

I have to say that he is right. Believing in God is entirely illogical…and I like to think that I’m a pretty logical person.

But I believe in God anyway.

Now, I do not have a perfect faith, but I do believe there is a God and that there is a plan.

I was trying explain my faith as we were talking and I hit upon this analogy. Of course I didn’t think of this analogy until the day after our conversation…it would have been much cooler and more satisfying if I could have formed this argument in the moment of debate…but whatever.

Here’s what I think…

Belief in God is all about feeling and intuition in the same way that being a parent is all about feeling and intuition.

I mean, when you have a new baby there are times when you simply don’t know what it wants. You’ve fed it, changed it, burped it, rocked it, sung to it, and the baby is still crying. Because you hopefully want to be a good parent (and because you really want to get some sleep), you keep trying to figure out what your baby wants. Through trial and error you slooooowwwwly come to recognize the signals that your baby is throwing out there. You can tell the hungry cry from the cranky cry. You can tell the “I’m just throwing a fit” cry from the “something is really wrong” cry.

Now to anybody else a baby crying is just a baby crying - could mean anything or could mean nothing. But to you, the parent who has spent hours and hours and days and years studying this child, that cry means something…something specific.

Can you prove it?

Well…maybe not.

But you know what you know and you feel what you feel whether it’s logical or not.

Believing in God is a quest. A quest for a feeling that helps you find answers to questions that, like your baby's cry, only you might understand. It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice but eventually, slowly, you start to recognize the signs...and then maybe even start to sleep through the night.

Of Mice and Me

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Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between. ~Mignon McLaughlin

So I’ve had to take kind of a mental health month away from several of my normal hobbies and pursuits (like blogging) this month. My mom had to have hip replacement surgery. This is a relatively common yet still pretty serious procedure that, I’ve learned, has a fair amount of post-operative what-nots to go along with it. All in all things have gone pretty well, Mom is recovering well…and I have discovered that I was absolutely right when I decided that nursing was not the profession for me.

I’ve also discovered that Doctors and Nurses and Physical Therapists and the like often use the very same tone with their patients (and the family members of their patients) as did Ebay’s Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Jones. I’m not saying this is a bad thing necessarily. Hip replacement surgery is generally performed on folks of…shall we say advancing years, and taking a tone reminiscent of Mr. Rogers is actually very soothing and reassuring…but also slightly comical…at least to me.

In other news, we’ve been hit with pestilence of biblical proportions at our house this week. Ok, ok…maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. But on the same night Ebay and I discovered, seriously, the largest spider ever seen in captivity on our living room wall. And simultaneously, while we were arguing about who was going to deal with super-spider (Ebay is just no use as a man when it comes to spiders), a mouse ran along floorboard of the very same wall!!!

What the freak!

Now I don’t really ever like spiders much. But I don’t mind mice out in the woods and fields and in Beatrice Potter books. But I seriously don’t wanna live with ‘em!

This is the first mouse we’ve seen since moving into the house, so hopefully it’s just a solitary rodent soul looking for seclusion, or facing some initiation into a mouse fraternity perhaps. But whatever the reason, we’re having a visit from the Orkin man tomorrow ‘cause I already have enough trouble sleeping at night as it is without mice dreams and spider nightmares. Not to mention that my mom is using a walker right now. Running, screaming and jumping on the furniture to get a way from a mouse (or spider) while using a walker after hip-replacement surgery might cause the nice Mr. Roger-esque Physical Therapist to alter his soothing tone…don'tcha think?

Thinking of Home

Pin It I’ve been dwelling lately.

I’ve been thinking about Cloverleaf Beach on the Columbia River.


It’s been on my mind for the past several weeks.

I do a photo meme each week and someone posted a set of images from a trip they took. One of the shots this week reminded me of this little beach I went to all throughout my growing up which is located in Eastern Washington.

The funny thing is that I started to dwell on this even before I saw the image…the photo just made it more pronounced for some reason. This week I started to catch faint whiffs of pine needles and the scent of river air occasionally as I made to go into my house or left my school in the late afternoon/early evening sun—though no pine trees were nearby.

It’s odd, really...after all, I haven’t been to Cloverleaf Beach in years.

If it was feasible, possible, or in all reality if I were able, I’d drive there tonight and sit on the beach. I’d take off my shoes and soak my feet in the cool water. I’d lean back and gaze out at the expanse of the river, allowing the gentle lapping of that shimmering water against sand to ebb and wash away the dust and worries of everyday life.

I’d breathe in the sweet scent of pine pitch heavily laden in air.

I’d soak in the heat wafting from the sand, and burrow my fingers underneath its coarse grains.

I’d listen to the rippling of the water and the cries of birds as the creaking of the old floating dock as it moved about in the center of the swimming area.

I’d wait as darkness fell and the chime of crickets swept over the area like the gentle rolling of thunder down distant canyons.

I’d feel as if I were home.