God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  Image created by the author using ChatGTP. The young women depicted do not resemble the persons mentioned in the story, but all else is spot on. This is my own true story. It was the end of the spring semester at the University of Washington. I was a flaky, insecure 20-year-old art student with an unimpressive GPA who had acquired a summer job in the cafeteria of the Safeco Insurance building. Despite my Catholic upbringing, I was an agnostic who was actively searching for God. The previous semester, I had taken World History. One of the requirements was to read “The Sermon on the Mount,” three chapters in the book of Matthew. It rocked my world. If there is anything to Christianity, I thought, this is how it should be. From my Catholic education, I knew the story of St. Augustine, how he heard a child’s  voice  one day saying, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” A book was sitting next to him, so he picked it up and read  Romans  13:13, admonishing hi...

  Image by author using ChatGPT I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools from 3 rd through 6 th grade. Although committed to my faith, I had a tendency even before college to shake my fist at heaven and demand, “Why?” Why do women have to wear hats, veils, and scarves to church? Why can’t we go past the altar rail? How can you judge people when you are so distant? I just wasn’t impressed with the 200-year-old appearances of the Virgin Mary on a foreign hillside to shepherd children. People need God here and now. In High School, three of us gals would sit at lunch and discuss religion. One was a Unitarian, one a Mormon, and I was still a devout Catholic. We were all committed to the belief system in which we were raised, and we were all aware of that bias. When I had a question I couldn’t answer, I went to the priest, fetching that wisdom back to our philosophical coterie. College is usually where it all falls apart, and that happened to me. It dawned on me that all...

  Image by author using ChatGPT In 2010, I had just finished Russell Targ 's autobiographical book , Do You See What I See? Memoir of a Blind Biker . Targ did extensive work on the CIA's remote viewing program in the 1970s and 80s. He is a believer in ESP and a variety of other arcane paranormal phenomena. Targ shares three compelling afterlife stories. One tale involves an Icelandic sailor who drowned decades previously. His body washed ashore and was badly mutilated by birds and dogs. Although he was buried in the local cemetery, his thigh bone was discovered later built into the wall of a home. When the owner of the home was present at a seance, the ghost appeared and indicated that he wanted his thigh bone back. He revealed its location, and sure enough, it was there. One must ask, what did he think he was going to do with it? It was claimed from previous seances that he still had a craving for alcohol, tobacco, and colorful speech. If there is a happy place called heav...

  St. Teresa of Avila, Getty Images The day our GPS tried to kill us. And no, St. Theresa is not The Babe. Some years ago, my husband Ted and I spent his last day of a break from teaching by driving into the Sierras. The following day, it would be back to long weeks of grading. We took a nice walk by a river. Then we drove up a highway and decided to make a small town in the middle of the piney woods our goal. On the map it was quite simple. Turn off Hwy XX onto a paved road, stop at this quaint little town for a cup of coffee, continue through town on the same road, loop back to Hwy XX, and go on home. I’ll call the town Pittsville, because I have some not so nice things to say about it. Not only did we have the map to guide us, we had “The Babe,” Ted’s GPS. How could we lose? It turned out that Pittsville was not a cute little town with barns and antique shops. It was the armpit of the Sierras, full of broken down houses and rural looking people. Two kids playing outside were...

Image by iStock Photos Long ago in the 1960s, I was in a Pentecostal church where the visiting preacher referenced Philippians 4:2, “ I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. ” The preacher added, “I call ‘em You Are Odious and Soon Touchy.” The congregation howled with laughter. We could all recall catty church spats among men as well as women. It may be unfair to require someone to change their opinion or judgment on a matter, but it’s not unreasonable to ask for a willing compromise. That means that one or the other combatant has to blink, to surrender their demands, to let it go . A disciple of Christ who is soon-touchy has everyone tiptoeing around them, not wanting to set off that BP spiking lecture or the cold shoulder pout. You-are-odious people are quick to judge, lacking the ability to see themselves in the mirror, or hear how obnoxious and toxic their attitude is. In his plea for the women to reconcile, Paul is calling for hum...