Resting in Peace

I have been to four funerals since December, four more than I would have like to have attended. It has got me thinking about the afterlife. I must warn the reader that there are no answers here. I have not figured out who goes where, where where is or even what where is. Leo Tolstoy spent a great deal of time railing against the church for deceiving people through the ages and scaring them into believing it's doctrines and, at the same time, paying money so that the hierarchy can get rich and against governments for threatening people with force to get them to do as the government wants. I'm simplifying things here, but he believed that the Kingdom of God is within each of us and each of us has the power within us to change the world and to bring to fruition the things Christ taught us.

All of the great religions of the world, of which I am aware, believe in some type of life after death. Some believe that we are reincarnated and that we keep going until we achieve a state of perfection. Some, like my Roman Catholic tradition, believe that we go to heaven (the good place) or hell (the bad place). Some say hell is a place of torture, others believe it is going out of existence so that we are in the same state as before we were born. But, wait. How do we know we weren't in existence before we were born? Maybe we were in another dimension, or another incarnation.

I was tempted to do a Google search for the afterlife, but then I thought how foolish that would be. I would get a zillion posts with two zillion opinions. I know, I don't believe, I know that it all has somehow to do with love. I don't know how it all works, but I think that we will end up all loving one another, but how? If we don't love one another here on earth, how will we, all of a sudden, become such great people after we die? Don't know. But, I believe Tolstoy is right. We have the power within us, each of us, to love, and to love not only those close to us, but to love every one of our neighbors in the world. It's not easy though. I can like people, but to truly love them is harder. Not that there is anything wrong with the people (except congress people this week), but there is something lacking in me. I have to change myself. Maybe then I can realize that the Kingdom of God is really within me and that I can help to make it come into being here on earth.

This is profound and I haven't even begun to write all that I think on this subject. It is difficult because we don't know what lies beyond this life and, let's face it, no matter how religious we are, or how much we say we accept that our reward will be in heaven, we don't really look forward to going anyplace. We don't want to die. We are afraid of what may be out there, oh we of little faith.

To be continued.

Congress Should Dissolve Itself

Congress, those lunkheads. How dare they threaten to close down our government. They get paid very well, both the house and the senate, to run the government, not to threaten to shut it down. They would close the national parks and monuments, OUR national parks and monuments. The President showed up at the Lincoln Memorial to greet visitors and told them that both sides had worked out their differences and therefore they could enjoy their visit. How dare he? They have no right to even think about shutting down our monuments, our parks, our country.  They would delay our tax refund checks and delay pay for countless soldiers and federal employees. Please note that the members of congress, house and senate, would not do without their own pay. How dare they, these arrogant people who only think about how to get re-elected so that they can take advantage of all of the perks that they get. And what about that guy, presiding in the house, who was caught on camera sitting there autographing pictures of himself while this is all going on. How dare they. The whole bunch of them, republicans, democrats, tea partyers, coffee drinkers, the whole pack of them, should get out and let us replace them. None of them should be eligible to run again. In each district every taxpayer's name should be put in a hat, a kindergarten child should be selected by lot who would then reach into the hat and pick out the next congressman or senator for that district. How much worse could it be? It would probably be a lot better. I'm disgusted with the whole lot of them. They waste or steal money. They can't seem to reject special interest groups. They think only of themselves. Get out. Get out you bums and let us have our country back.

I guess you could say I'm disturbed by the current state of our governmental affairs.

An International Following

I discovered the heading "Stats" on my blog and found that I had over a thousand views of my posts since I began writing, or since last May, I'm not sure which. I was surprised to see that the viewers are from the same countries that also view my other blog and several others with which I am familiar. And here I thought that my two followers were coming back to read it again and again.

We are going to another wake tonight. Our friend, Jim Carr passed on to a better life. He had some type of cancer. I have been in more than my share of funeral homes lately, although, thankfully, I'm going in and out of my own accord.

Rite-Aid Redeemed

After the snafu with refilling my prescription with Rite-Aid, I decided to wait to order my next prescription from Shop-Rite until I finally had the one I ordered from Rite-Aid so that, hopefully, the doctor's office would send the right one to the right store. I got a call the other evening from Rite-Aid and I thought, "Oh no, they have the prescription order I phoned into Shop Rite." Instead it was the managing pharmacist calling to apologize for the mix up. He said he had a message from corporate that there had been a problem. That surprised me because I didn't contact corporate, or even really complain other than to tell the person who waited on me that I hadn't ordered drugs B and C, but drug A and that I didn't really understand how that could happen since I used their automated phone system. Anyway, they called up and I told them that all was right with the world and that I finally got the correct meds, but kudos to Rite-Aid for following up.