In just the past few months we’ve seen a real drift towards acceptance regarding our fellow human beings. Let’s see, we’ve witnessed a man’s body transform to match his soul, a white woman change her appearance to feel at ease with her black soul and the Supreme Court ruled that it is the spirit that loves…not the body.

I am sure that if my Grandma Maggie was alive today she’d say “There was never any of this shenanigans going on when I was growing up.” My reply to her would be “Yes there was, you just never heard about it.”

Back when news traveled by what the local paper printed, what the two TV channels told you and the proverbial word of mouth you didn’t hear about ( as Maggie would put it “such things.”) Of course this is a woman who referred to gay men as “light in their slippers” and although she never used the “N” word, she did call black people “darkies”. Let’s just say it’s a good thing she’ll never have a Facebook or Twitter account.

Before I share my thoughts regarding the above mentioned “news” items I think it is important that you are aware of my spiritual beliefs. I was raised Catholic (recovering) and have been involved in with the Lutheran religion.  I guess I have always questioned some of the Doctrines of these and others religions. For example, if God is ALL FORGIVING why is there a Hell? Stuff like that got me 20 minutes staring at a statue of The Blessed Virgin Mary in the corner. And, if just writing a J.M.J. at the top of your paper got you 157,804 years out of Purgatory…what kind of place is it?…and where is it? Can’t be Heaven, can’t be Hell, has to be somewhere in between. YIKES! Earth is Purgatory!

Speaking of Heaven, Paradise, Eden, Olympus, Nirvana….whatever you call it, I believe we are all looking for roadmaps to the same place. I have personally decided to follow my own inner map based on what I truly believe. I recognized that there is a common denominator between the infant years of my life and religions. Anything I tell you about them falls under the category “I’ve been told.” It’s up to me to decide what to believe from what I’ve been told. The “factual” beliefs I have regarding my religious based teachings are another blog.

I do believe in a God. I believe that there is a great spiritual being. I call it God but that’s my name for what others call Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, Krishna, OM, Shiva, Yahweh and many more.  It’s all the same Spirit and I’m comfortable with the white haired bearded guy.

Now I’ll get a little Twilight Zone meets Touched By An Angel. In just the past few years I’ve given myself the freedom and challenge to come to grips with my spiritual beliefs. Recognizing the society that we live in, I have this disclaimer. These are MY beliefs. In no way am I writing this to convince, convert or tick off anyone. This is what I believe, not necessarily what I know since there’s a big difference between know and believe.

Here’s what I’ve come up so far. Every person has an equal spirit. This falls under I know. How these spirits are distributed falls under I believe. Actually, everything from here on out falls under the believe column. A spirit does not die with the body. Our bodies are just vessels that two people created to carry a spirit. It is, in reality the luck of the draw. I have an image of the spirits (or as my daughter calls them orbs) being scattered to fall willy nilly where they may. These are spirits that have left a vessel and time in history and are coming back to a whole new vessel and time in history. The goal of each spirit is to make their world a better place each time they are in a new vessel. The spiritual goal that I believe we’re all challenged with is to practice “The Golden Rule” until it’s achieved universally.

That brings us back to the recent news items I mentioned. Although I have neither scientific proof nor logical answer it’s obvious there are spirits that landed into bodies that didn’t fit. Another category in my spiritual belief is “I don’t know but I’ll find out when I die”. I don’t know if spirits have gender. I don’t know if spirits have ethnicity. I do know that every body has a spirit and that is what I embrace. The packaging is not as important as the cargo it carries.

I think we’ve moved closer to that goal of The Golden Rule.

This is the time of year when the words Warning and Watch in weather reports scroll across the bottom of our TV screens. I’ve heard people say they can never remember which is worse. To me Watch means it could happen and Warning means it’s going to happen.

Growing up in the flats of SW Minnesota we had different verbiage. A Watch would have been described as “Stand in your yard and watch the sky change color over the farmlands north of town.”  You could actually feel the wind change direction around your body.

But that change in the wind brought with it the Warning. If the dark lava from storm clouds was attached to these winds we headed to our basement.

Our basement was one of those musty, dark cement basements where daddy-long-legs held conventions. It was a multi-purpose portion of our house. In this case it served as a storm shelter. We’d gather under the open wooden stairway having always been told that it was the safest place in our house. Behind us on the cement wall hung the cabinet referred to as “the rations”. Inside were cans of vegetables (mostly green beans), jars of home preserved fruit, candles, matches, a transistor radio and of course a can opener. If our entire house collapsed on top of us and we couldn’t get out…we wouldn’t starve.

In later years that same cabinet served as rations when our basement became our bomb shelter and the same items were still inside. The cans were rusted and the preserves made the Donner party menu look good. Had Khrushchev’s “shoe” dropped this could have been the precursor to microwave food. We knew our bomb shelter wasn’t the safest place in the world, that honor went to the area under our desks back at school. As always this was still the safest place in the house. Fortunately the Commies never bombed my home town, but we were ready!

Now the Watches and Warnings are determined by more scientific means and we get them on every media available. I still go out to watch the clouds roll across the sky and wait to feel the wind change direction. But the minute I hear a siren I’m headed for our storm shelter. It is in our basement in a bathroom where I have promised my daughter that I’ll check for spiders whenever it looks like a storm is brewing. Our rations are granola bars and a jug of water. Our candles are battery operated and cell phones replace the radio.  One thing that I’ve recently added is shoes. Usually these storms happen during the Spring and Summer when people are barefoot. It’s tough to walk out of a building covered in broken glass when you’re barefooted.

And, just like that wooden staircase of my youth it is the safest place in this house. When the Watch goes to Warning that’s where we’ll be.

I am a self-proclaimed political geek. I enjoy the political machine and personalities that make it run.  I work at home and I have the MN Legislature cable channel on in the back ground during session.

I’ve come to realize they speak in dollar amounts I can’t truly comprehend.  I just needed to look up what’s after billions. That’s the denomination that came into a debate. There are 9 zeros in a billion and then it jumps to 12 zeros in a Trillion. Yikes.

I remember when a Million dollars seemed incomprehensible.  That was only 6 zeros but it looked like a lot on the checks that Michael Anthony delivered on The Millionaire in the 1950’s TV series. I thought that the next denomination after Million was Heaven. It would change people’s lives in both good and bad ways on the series. In an hour we were shown the proper behavior for when we accepted our check and the pitfalls of bad judgement. Building an orphanage or convent was good.  Spending a day at the track…not so much. The only stipulation for accepting the money was that the recipient could not tell anyone where they got it. Oh yeh, that would go over great today! “I found coins buried under a tree” will only work so often.

Those 6 zeros would still change my life and the lives of almost everyone I know. We could wipe our debt slate clean with money to spare. Unfortunately, Michael Anthony isn’t making house calls any more, but there is still the Publisher’s Clearing House.

Back to the numbers that government throws about. To be honest, I cannot take these numbers seriously. They sound like play money. Heck there was only $15,140 in the total bank of Monopoly. That wouldn’t pay for infrastructure repairs to Reading Railroad by today’s standards. You’d need to add 6 zeros. That’s only 72,000,000 trips pass GO.

Is there a billion dollar bill or do you just pay with 10 million bills? I’m sure that there is money allocated to the Treasury Department in order for them to keep up with the printing process. There probably aren’t that many billion bills needed since they won’t get passed around a lot. Fewer yet will go through the laundry. And whose picture is on it?  My candidate is Robin Williams. Every time someone looked at the bill they would imagine his thoughts about that denomination.

I suppose I would get a lot of answers if I researched the US Treasury Department. I can now only imagine how large the facilities must be to store the billions worth of gold that are pouring in to cover the new debt. I have never understood why we give gold the value we do. I understand oil and our dependency on it. But gold? I think it’s pretty but I’d rather have soup bullion if I was stranded on a desert island. The survival values outweigh something shiny.

I have come to accept that although the numbers are probably imaginary, the needs are real. Somehow, somewhere something will be done. It just takes more imagination.

By the way, look for the term Quadrillion in next year’s Legislative session. (That’s 15 zeros).