The Divine Masculine & Divine Feminine...a Balance...

I was going through images I'd taken of stuff I want to sell on eBay, and upon working on images of a book called "When I See the Wild God," I was reminded of my own points of view on the Divine Masculine and how I relate to it as a woman.

This is not going to be a totally "pat-answer" blog post by any means. In fact, I hope to turn this topic upside down, shake out all the crap layered on by society, and even views held by certain sects of the Pagan community that are geared towards the thought of the Divine Feminine being totally quashed by the shadow aspect of the masculine energies on this planet, and that in order to honor the Sacred Feminine, the masculine energies deserve to have all kinds of vitriol heaped up on them, or at best, ignored completely.

That kind of limiting view just by itself does a huge disservice to the men I've known in the past, and currently know in the here and now.

Because for us women to hate on the masculine energies completely is to hate the masculine within ourselves. It is just as dangerous a viewpoint as the men hating on the feminine, especially within themselves. Ironically, the women I've encountered who join such groups as Starhawk's "Reclaiming" covens, etc. are often expressing energies usually deemed as "masculine": anger, indignation, etc.

But are they really truly "masculine" energies, or just energies that *every* human experiences at feeling repressed and blocked from being able to be who they are meant to be?

Because, growing up, I watched my own father--a very gentle soul--repress his anger at his very aggressive, dominating mother, because he was taught that not only were you not supposed to "talk back," "sass" or otherwise contradict the parents, but my grandmother wholly believed that she was in the right for treating people the way she did. If they did or said something that she thought was foolish, or whatever, she would speak up and say stuff to shame that other person, and if you were around her enough, or were sensitive to criticism at all, she would slowly but surely insinuate that her way was always right (which it wasn't--she was very narrowminded, racist, etc) and speaking up against her was a surefire way to invoke her wrath.

Sometimes, I want to tell every "man-hater" I meet that story about my dad, and then ask them, "So, do you still believe that every man is a pile of crap just because he's a man? And do you still believe that women are in the right always, just because they're women?"

The question I want to ask the men is: do you know any strong, opinionated women? What did they accomplish? Did they accomplish what they did by being meek, quiet and doormat-ish? Or did they accomplish what they did by saying to their detractors, "I have a voice, I'm going to use it, now shove off and let me talk"?
 
In my studies of Taoism and Buddhism, there are the Yin (feminine) energies, which are more resting, yielding, more receptive and "introverted," and then there are the Yang energies, which are more active, giving and "extroverted."

People have tried to place judgments on which form of energy is "better" or "superior," and therefore have tried to place certain social statuses on people based on these judgments. In my experience, these are merely gender polarities, and neither one is "better" than another.  The folks that try to claim which energy is more "superior" tend to have power and control issues of one sort or another.

As I said, I am not going to try and iron out everything I feel and believe in just one blog post. This is going to take quite a bit of time, quite a bit of thought and quite a bit more study.

Blessings,
Kat ^.^

Spiritual Path Taking a Turn for the Wild!

I did a wild and crazy thing the other day by going out on a limb and offering to read for people over at the Doreen Virtue Angel Therapy page on Facebook.

To say the response was nearly instant and overwhelming is a mindblowing understatement.

I already wrote about it over at my newest blog. I probably should have saved it for posting here but I figured that's what cross-posting is for! :-D

Every day I am getting savvier and savvier about getting seen on the web. ;-)

This was just a brief post for the purpose of trying out "cross-blogging."

I will post something a bit deeper later, I promise! :-)

Blessings,
Kat ^.^

Equinoxes and Solar Eclipse and Solar Transits, Oh My!

I was going to be all organized and stuff, starting regular posting as of this past Friday, especially considering the 20th was a HUGE energy day. I was even all excited about it...

I didn't realize, however, that the energy of the Solar Eclipse in Pisces would bring up a bunch of subconscious crap, triggering both me and a long-time friend. To say I dislike conflict, especially between me and anyone I care about, is a supreme understatement. Especially when said loved one is not exactly the most tactful person around, and I am very emotionally sensitive.

Thankfully, things were resolved between us, for the most part, but that left me feeling like I didn't want to post a damn thing. I am not at my literary best when I'm down and out, so...

I am posting now merely about the effects the solar eclipse had on me. I'm still wrestling with the stuff that got brought up...like "what will peeps think of me if I do (insert activity of choice here)?" Worrying about what people think of me is not new to me this lifetime, according to an intuitive friend of mine. She says it dates back to previous lives where I apparently got killed for speaking up, or being who I am. Which explains why I have issues with my throat chakra this lifetime, and I really, really want to get that cleared up. :P

I mean, this "worrying about what people think" crap has got me going this way and that even about the smallest stuff my soul is telling me to do. It didn't help my mom added to the mix with her own similar issues when I was growing up. I love my mom, but dang!

Now, there are some things I do that people just roll their eyes at and I don't give a flying monkey's butt. But I notice it's the things that are dear to me...things I consider treasures and joys of my soul. That's the stuff for which I've gotten the most crap.

And like a certain favorite masked musician of mine, I want to cry out, asking "WHY???"

And the answer of "Because people are @$$holes" is just not good enough. I want to get down to why people choose to be ignorant. I want to get down to why people choose to be small-minded, petty and bereft of any intellectual prowess. I want to get down to why people choose to butt their noses into people's business, disregarding healthy boundaries, and thinking they have the right to dictate other people's lives for them, either through words and/or facial expressions. And then I want to understand why those people choose to behave like whiny babies and try and push the guilt-buttons when others push back and say, "No, don't do that to me, it's inappropriate." And I am most certainly not content to say "that's just the way things are," because I'm too much of an Indigo for that. Too much of a Starseed who knows that things can and should be better for ALL humanity.

I wonder if it's time to go back to learning psychology. Maybe. I don't know if modern psych classes, either offered free via the virtual courses now offered by certain websites, or in continuing education classes at the local college would help me find answers.

I wonder if I could even go back to school for such a thing in a regular fashion. I've already got student debt I've got on forbearance...I really don't want to pile on more debt.

Sometimes I truly think I'd get better answers from the angels. I'm serious about that. The angels don't need psych degrees to tell me the honest-to-God truth about other humans.

And now the song "You Have To Be Carefully Taught" from "South Pacific" is floating into my head.

You have to be carefully taught
to hate all the people your relatives hate.

That's the only verse I can remember from the song, but it's part of an apt answer from the higher realms, with thought-forms like:

"The reason why people choose certain thoughts or actions is because people get taught to think--or not think. And the people before them learned those unhealthy things, and so on back in time. And the cycles of negative thoughts and behaviors gets cycled downwards through the generations because it's considered 'uncool'--to use an Earth term--to challenge the status quo, to challenge people's thinking. That's the reason for many conflicts: thought-forms get challenged and the ones who don't like their thought-forms being challenged are the ones who are often most insecure about what they think, but they're buoyed up by everyone else's believing the same things, and they believe they have to either kill, or at least emotionally punish others for being different, or thinking in different ways. On and on it goes, until someone like you decides to step up and say, No more! That, my dear, is where the fun begins. The fun of watching things shift on your planet, that is. You might not call it fun, of course, but you can think of it like this: imagine your Earth as a body, and it's sick with a bacterial infection called negativity and violence. It would be similar to sinus and lung congestion because it involves communication. Now, imagine antibiotics or perhaps naturopathic healing herbs or something like that coming in and shaking up all that congestion, eucalyptus and tea tree oil knocking the mucus loose, purifying everything and making the planet-body "cough up" all that thick crud and get rid of it once and for all. 

Now, the verbal equivalent to that eucalyptus or tea tree oil might be you Indigos and Crystals standing up, standing your ground and saying, 'No more of this crap. We can't take it anymore, and we won't take it anymore. People are being hurt too much by others' bad choices, lack of sympathy, empathy, compassion, and so on. We are not going to let this go on. We're better than this. We can be better!' 

And yes, my dear, you are one of those people standing up, because you, too have been wounded. You know what it's like. And yes, you are angry that people choose to continue this nonsense. And it is okay, so long as you channel the anger in constructive ways."

Wow...that's more than just a few 'thought-forms,' isn't it? I felt like that might have been a channel or something, maybe. I don't know. Once I get flowing with words like that, words that flow into my mind's eye like that...it's like I can't stop until the message feels "done." If it was a channel, I don't know who was 'talking,' but when the words come forth addressing me and calling me 'my dear' like that, I know it's gotta be from the Higher Realms someplace.

I would like to know who I'm talking to, specifically, when I get thought-forms flowing into my head like that when I ask passionate questions like I just did up above. I mean, Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God are one thing, but my own conversations with higher beings? I mean, am I talking directly to Source, or a slightly lower emanation, like Michael, Raphael, or perhaps other Ascended Masters or something? Not that I'm claiming to be special, but every time this happens, it feels like that 'voice' won't stop until it's done telling me what it wants to tell me. :P

Anyway, this post was a bit of a ramble, but I admit it feels a lot more genuine and flowing than the other actual post I was writing on the day of the equinox solar eclipse, because that other draft is so stilted in word flow--and I may just delete it.

Suffice to say my original organization idea--at least for this blog--is a bit off-kilter, but perhaps I needed a few days to recover so my words would flow better. 

Yours in Pax Felinum (Peace of the Cat--meow! What can I say? ;-)),
Kat

Rest in Peace, Captain Mork...

It's all over the news: Robin Williams, aka "Mork," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Patch Adams," and a host of other roles he was known for, has passed over to the Other Side.

Cause of death? Suicide, it seems. Not surprising since the man battled alcohol addiction most of his life. And that, my friends, is part of what makes the whole thing tearjerking.

Because Robin Williams was one of those truly unique people who do what it takes to not "sell out" and be a carbon copy of everyone else, just for the sake of money.

No, Robin made his living doing what he did best: just being himself. And he did a lot of good for the world. Despite his long inner struggle, his brilliant wit and charm touched a lot of hearts as well as gave us pains in our sides from laughing so. Damn. HARD!!!!

He's been the inspiration for a lot of people in show biz, to say nothing of his warmth and compassion endearing him to movie-and-TV-watchers the world over.

So to find out he ended his own life just tears at the collective inner being of everyone who's watched at least one of his movies or standup routines. And it makes me a little bit angry.

Why? Because I feel something should be done about things like this for ALL people, not just the actors and singers in the public eye. Sure, there's the suicide prevention hotline, and that's great. I am *not* dismissing that, at all. But what about improving our mental health system to where depressed folks aren't just medicated and enrolled in talk therapy? We need to get at the root of what brings on the depression, the addictions.

Some might say it's past life issues clouding things, and it is likely that that is a big part of the problem. Some say it's one's environment growing up, and that, too, plays a role in the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. To be truthful, there are so many strands of possibilities that it is very challenging, if not impossible, to nail down one single root cause for each individual. Psychology is still technically in toddlerhood-to-early-elementary-age. We still don't know enough about the brain, let alone the human SOUL to really get a good grip on why things like addictions manifest, let alone thoughts of suicide, or actions taken to end one's own life.

Which is why I am becoming a strong advocate for alternative healing modalities such as Reiki and Matrix Energetics (Google them both--they're amazing sources of healing that I personally have experienced--and they WORK!).

I strongly feel allopathic medicine and psychiatry and Big Pharma are very, very misguided in their thinking that medicating everyone for this or that mental or emotional problem is the cure-all for everyone's inner issues. Yes, some people respond well to things like SSRI's (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and other medications that reduce depression and anxiety. But I do not think this should be the only answer. And yes, professional therapy should be part of all of this.

But I am also going to say that maybe, just maybe, people's issues are more deep-seated than what's going on in this lifetime. And I have this strong feeling that this was likely the case with Robin Williams, as it might be with a lot of people.

Of course, all this begs the question: Why are so many CREATIVE people beset by mental and emotional issues? Big Medicine says "Who cares? If they have problems, let's just medicate them." I'm sorry, but that's no real answer. Medicating creative people like that can dull the edge of otherwise very sharp, incisive wits and talent. We need to start doing some honest-to-God studies of brains that belong to the most creative people out there, just to see if we can find out any correlations we have not thought of in neuroscience and psychology. It's not enough to say "this world is too harsh for them." Granted, there are a LOT of cruel people and a LOT of crappy situations. And some folks, creative though they may be, just might not have the tools in their self-healing belt to cope with the cruelty or injustice. That's the key--learning to adapt, learning how to deal with the onslaught of negative vibes in the world. As an empath and creative person myself, that has been a big issue. But for the sake of my calling, learning to balance and adapt is an absolute necessity.

Indeed, many creative people are very emotionally sensitive. It's what makes an Oscar or Tony-winning actor worthy of the awards they get for dramatic roles. It's what makes a class-act musician reap serious glory and praise from their fans. They dig down deep, they let their emotions flow, they pour their heart and soul into their respective crafts, whatever their creative calling might be.

And if life deals them a harsh blow, or several, and they have no real tools to cope properly, that's when the implosion can happen, whether slowly or quickly.

Yet it is the creative, emotionally sensitive people who are likely called to bring light and healing to the world, just as Robin Williams did with his beautifully over-the-top, sidesplitting humor. They say laughing is good for you. Why, then, do people like Robin end up feeling such inner torment despite their ability to uplift and entertain?

Humanity needs answers. Humanity deserves answers that go beyond the next prescription of anti-anxiety or anti-depressant drugs. We need and deserve solutions that go beyond the suicide hotline, helpful as it obviously has been over the years. People like Robin Williams need deep healing--healing that can help balance, but not dim the emotionally sensitive, empathic lights that bring so much joy to this world that seems to get crazier by the minute.

Rest in Peace, Robin Williams. I, and the whole world, will miss you terribly. You are now in the angels' care, though...so, safe travels, Star-Brother.

Peace To All Beings,
Kat ^.^

WWFRD? Or What Would Fred Rogers Do?

"It's a Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood!"...

Anyone who is older than perhaps 15 or so remembers Fred Rogers, aka "Mister Rogers," and remembers those immortal beginning words to the theme song of his world-renowned show. Well, known, at least, to the Western world. I don't know how well-known he is in Japan or China or anything, but one never knows. They know about Western artists, so why not a gentle, dapper Presbyterian minister from Pittsburgh?

Many of us watched him every morning before school or afternoon after school, depending on the local PBS station programming schedule.

Those of us who really needed his guiding, loving words feel this immeasurable poignant ache realizing over and over again he's no longer on this physical plane. He was the embodiment of the prayer of St. Francis: "Let me be the channel of Your peace."

It's been eleven years since his passing, still his memory reverberates because the spirit of Love reverberated through all the lives he touched. It is likely he became a surrogate father to those whose own biological fathers were either absent physically or so wounded themselves they could not be good fathers, emotionally. He was an ordained Presbyterian minister, yet he knew that Love goes beyond denominational dogma. He showed the love of God to all who came within his presence.

He was as close to being Christlike as any human can possibly manage while still having human foibles. Such an appellation he would shun, I am pretty sure, his humble nature disallowing him to be equated with such an Ascended Master as Jesus. Yet, when you've been embraced by such Love, even through a television screen, and then you grow up with that memory of Love in your heart, you begin to wonder about how Mr. Rogers would react, or what he would say in response to what's going on in your life...sort of a paraphrase of the 1990s phenomenon of "WWJD?," or What Would Jesus Do?"

Instead, because Fred Rogers is a little more recent figure, but no less loving, it seems, you could easily rephrase it as "What Would Fred Rogers Do?"

And honestly, such unconditional love coming from such a human source makes you wonder just how old his soul is...he is likely quite ancient, and he's off doing the work of Love in other regions of the Otherworld, perhaps being an avatar for Love on some other planet, in some other Universe. And such love as came forth from Mr. Rogers makes one wonder just how the cruel people in the world can possibly live with themselves.

Why am I writing all this? Well, I came across a book in Goodwill today called "I'm Proud of You: My Friendship With Fred Rogers." It was written by Fort Worth, TX newspaper columnist Tim Madigan, who began a very beautiful and healing friendship with Fred Rogers back in 1995, thanks to an interview he did with the children's program star.

It's not a large book by any means. It's one of those delightful two-hour reads you find under the Christmas tree because it's such a lovely, spiritual book that reflects the love shown at Christmas and other special times of one's life. I say spiritual because much of the message was about Love, rather than obeying this or that human idea that is often touted as "spiritual," but really isn't. Usually those human laws are more about draconian, fearful control, but Fred Rogers was NEVER like that. He talked about loving each other and respecting each other because everyone is worth loving and respecting, no matter the mistakes they make, no matter their wounds, no matter their flaws.

Knowing this about Mr. Rogers, I really wonder why there is this streak of perfectionism in so many people that seeks to judge so harshly. I wonder about it also because I have that streak myself. I see it and feel it, especially against myself, let alone other people. Am I proud of that judgmental streak? No. Not in the least. Do I experience exasperation when it comes to other people and their not-so-healthy ways of being, of treating others and the planet? Oh, heavens, yes! I experience it to the point of getting quite angry, I'm afraid.

And what makes me angrier is the feeling of not being heard, not being listened to. It makes me both angry and sad because I feel like there's stuff that people need to know--stuff that I feel is coming from deep in my God-self.

So here is where I come back to the question: What Would Fred Rogers Do?

The real, down-to-Earth answer is that I don't know. I never had the great fortune of meeting the guy. So I have to go within to think about my next best guess. And the only thing I can think of is the word "pray." Yeah, he would probably have prayed about what to say and how to say it so people will understand and hear with their hearts and not just their minds. How would he have dealt with any feelings of not being heard? Prayer.

In truth, I sense when people are listening intently and paying attention, because action is often taken on what's being said, no matter who is doing the speaking. Even if that action manifests a little at a time, they're still attempting to follow-up on what was said. If no action ensues, I either wonder if they're still trying to digest it, or they don't give a fig about anything other than themselves. Or they're so darn wounded that they don't have the confidence to take any action at all. And that's where one has to start from absolute square one--which is what Fred Rogers did a lot, I have a feeling. Sometimes absolute square one is the best place to start for a lot of healing things, emotionally speaking.

He would say things to that wounded person like, "I'm proud of you, and I like you, even if other people seem to do the opposite." To paraphrase the old Wild West movie phrase, "Them's healin' words!" Is it any wonder this man continues to be revered by so many, even eleven years after his passing?

There's an inner drive, an inner push to help people heal, that bubbles within every time I see someone upset. Of course, there are people just so far gone--they have no real will to help themselves get past their own "Furies," as Mr. Rogers would call them--that I cannot do much of anything. So all I can do is pray, pray and pray...give it all over to Great Spirit and the angels, because they have ways of handling things that one sole human cannot quite do on their own.

Because, yeah, that's what I think Fred Rogers would do.

Peace In The Neighborhood To You,
Kat ^.^

P.S....I just came up with a fab way to create a gratitude journal!

Musings...

I'm honestly too tired right now to write a fuller-length article, but I came home from work wanting to watch a documentary. There's a specific documentary series on Hulu that's captured my attention, and one of those documentary episodes I watched tonight. It was about who *really* wrote the New Testament. There were some things I knew, some things I didn't.

Pop interrupted my watching TV to talk to me about possibly coming to church to hear this one guy give a sermon on the book of Romans, chapter 8. This guy I sorta know well; he's the lawyer who, about ten or so years ago, helped my parents and me deal with this one collection agency who kept calling and harassing us for money when we just didn't have the money they wanted. By that reckoning, I am interested in hearing what he has to say, just because he IS a lawyer, and by virtue of that schooling, clearly has more than enough experience in logic and reason. So it's not like I'd be having to listen to someone like a certain conservative Christian from Canada who has oft-times ignored the rules of respectful epistemological debate and just rudely pressed for his own world view. I refuse to write said Canadian's name, simply because he is the conservative Christian version of Voldemort (downright evil and thinking he's always in the right), but those of you who have watched the recent debates between atheists and conservative Christians likely know to whom I am reluctantly referring.

No, the guy that's going to give a sermon tomorrow would be far more interesting to me, for the sake of pure intellectual exercise, than listening to the likes of He-Who-Should-Not-Debate-At-All. I just wish the sermon didn't have to be part of the worship service--simply because most Sunday services are in the morning--EARLY morning, AND because I feel if I went, I would be giving my dad mixed messages.

I have NO interest in going back to Christianity as it is practiced by most people. My experiences and what I know about myself cannot be stuffed back into the box of un-knowing, just because others might prefer I remain a dumb sheep who follows dogma blindly. What I know about myself cannot be revealed to most people in mainstream religion. As much as I honor Jesus as an Ascended Master, I don't necessarily view Jesus in the same light as other people. I feel more comfortable having conversations with the Divine either in a park, or here in my room, typing on my computer.

I don't know how to express my wider view and spiritual path to most religious types except to place it within the box of Unitarian Universalism, to make it more understandable by others who may not share my path, have the same kind of knowledge I do, etc.

Yet despite my strong distaste for the idea of "returning to church" (an idea that I have a feeling my dad still holds as a possibility that might manifest), that wider view calls me to re-examine the ideas that come from the Bible and think deeper on what some of that stuff applies to how I see the world, etc. I am, for all intents and purposes, a Druid. And a Druid is called to explore and learn from other faith paths, among other things. That sounds a lot like me, really. I am also something of a Buddhist, something of a Taoist, something of a Hindu, and to a greater degree, a New Age hippie type person. My path is very, very eclectic.

And you know something? I like being that way. No, I love being that way. I love having ideas and being curious. I love chewing on food-for-thought, sipping on the philosophical wines on offer, sloshing them around in the mouth of my psyche, detecting this or that set of nuances and then just sitting and contemplating all of it. 

I am honestly more interested in sitting in my own inner temple while sitting by a stream, rather than perching my tail-feathers in a church pew. If I choose to be around people in a ritual-type setting, I'd rather be in a circle of fellow Druids and Wiccans honoring BOTH the Divine Feminine as well as the Divine Masculine.

Well, it looks like I wrote a somewhat long article anyhow. It seems once I get going, I get going...I must not have been TOO tired...or the words just needed to get out or else I was going to lay in bed for hours with this stuff swirling around my mind. In any case, it is not likely I will go hear this lawyer guy speak. As good as he is, his sermon is only going to be part and parcel of the whole church thing, and again, I really don't want to send my dad mixed messages or encourage whatever falsely conjured hope he has swirling around in his brain just because he and I have had some fairly constructive conversations about some things in recent months. Whatever epistemological and theological explorations I am undertaking, I am doing so because of the philosophical desire for thought-food and the desire for deeper spiritual understanding about myself, which can be acquired without regular church attendance, I feel.

Anyway...it's off to bed with me. Lots to do!!!!

Peace,
Kat ^.^

"Heaven Is For Real." My Thoughts On the Book & Movie.

It is said that each person takes away from a piece of artwork--be it a book, a film, a painting, whatever--whatever they put into it from their own personal experiences, their own gut reactions.

I know that I am no different. I have my thoughts, my opinions, be they informed or uninformed. I have my gut reactions, my experiences.

I also have my deep and abiding interest in NDE's, or Near-Death Experiences, which is what led me to stand in Wal-Mart some time ago and read "Heaven Is For Real" cover to cover, without buying the darn thing. Yes, that is how lost I get in the world of words.

Especially when it pertains to spirituality and every other person's experience of it. I was especially curious about Colton Burpo's experience, as related to his father, Todd, who authored the book. Maybe someday Colton himself will write about his experience first hand, in his words. In the meantime, there's the current book--and now a movie.

I just watched the movie, and my ultimate reaction to it is thus:

It never fails.

You're going along in your life and something happens to upend your whole existence. Either you are told something or you experience an event--or series of them--and what you thought you knew about life, about the afterlife, even, is changed. and invariably, the words and the experience both challenge what you've believed up to this current point in time. Even if you are already quite spiritual in your daily life, regardless of what form that spirituality takes.

Such is the power of an NDE. And such, therefore, is the power of the story of the experience to change the lives of the people who did not have the experience, but find their own notions of life challenged nevertheless.

So what opinion do I have of the movie itself as compared to the book?

Well, I really wished they would have found a way to portray more of Colton's visions. That was the meat of the book, in my view. But they juxtaposed his matter-of-fact words with the reactions of the people around him, including his own father and mother. And a child's matter-of-factness is often quite jarring for an adult. Especially an adult who has been taught to think and believe a certain way, or has had experiences that have caused them grief and have not found resolution. So seeing that dose of reality portrayed was refreshing. Because yes, it is more or less a feel-good movie, but it was not overly saccharine in the way many Christianity-oriented films tend to be.

I also felt anxious for the Burpos when the media circus comes knocking at their door, wanting interviews. On top of this, the couple are struggling, financially. All this really puts a strain on Sonja, Colton's mother, whose own faith is being challenged. And until Colton told her of the sister he never met because the baby died in utero, she was having trouble coming to terms with the notion that Colton was telling the truth instead of being inventive. I would also imagine that, as a pastor's wife, the struggle of her faith being challenged was not the easiest road to walk. It's not like pastor's wives can hide from everyone else and their oft-times ridiculous and unreasonable expectations. They're expected to be just as public as their partners. Of course, that's assuming the minister is a man.

And I'm digressing.

In the section of the movie where the church board is thinking about looking for another minister, my thought was this: Why not ask Colton to get up there and tell the congregation, in his words, what he experienced? I mean, whatever happened to "And a little child shall lead them?" Whatever happened to "Enter the kingdom of heaven as a little child?" Why is an adult's ideas considered more credible than a child's as far as getting up in church and saying stuff that's important to people's growth as human beings? Is it because when an adult says those important things, they're backed up by years of so-called education and a piece of paper that says "you have arrived here"?

Why do we adults end up feeling so mortified when a child corrects US on behavior that we have told them is wrong? It's because the kid has called us out on our own bullcrap. And we know it. I know because while I don't have kids, my own inner child reminds me of my own hypocrisies. I hear my eight-year-old self loud and clear. I think maybe I should enlist her help more often. Because while my adult self has learned to rationalize stuff away and wave her hand at stuff she wants to ignore, my eight-year-old Inner Little Kat, like the Maiden of Wands she is--purely intuitive, honest and forthright--gives me her best "Don't-give-me-that-crap" look.

As adults, we often lose our way. We think Heaven or whatever word you want to give to the realms beyond this one is "up there somewhere." It is, and it isn't. It's within us. It's within our Inner Child, or the eyes of the child you're looking at right now. The sleeping infant, the toddler with her thumb in her mouth, the precocious budding scientist exploring an anthill or looking through a telescope to discover the delights of the moon's craters.

This wasn't exactly a review, was it? But I figure this post was going to take the form it was going to take and nothing else. I spent some time trying to shape it into a classic review form, and like a child, it did not want to bend to my ego-desires. It wanted to take the form of a more honest, flowing discussion, which comes more naturally to me than trying to force words into an agreed-upon way of writing or speaking. Even my inner Little Kat says, "Oh, come on Big Kat, quit TRYING to say something and just say something."

And speaking from the heart, speaking honestly--which means engaging my inner Little Kat often--is a weight off my soul, to tell you the truth. No pretenses, no masks, just me being me digging in the dirt of my soul and finding all kinds of good stuff to play with.

Until later, neighbors...

Peace,
Kat ^.^