And the coming together

A friend comments,
"And I always had a quarter in my pocket, so I could always use the pay phone to call home in an emergency...."
Not too long ago we would find  glass boxes on the corner of gas stations, where we could insert quarters and make phone calls,  now replaced by cell phones.

Thoughts mix together, like nickles and dimes, that we used to buy cokes, that now won't buy a thing, unless you add coins  into dollars.
I was a child when I realized my Aunt was talking about going to Mars in a space ship, and calls were a nickle.  She bought a ticket, and was ready to live with the Martians.  Cokes were a nickle.
  I trusted adults, and She spoke to God, when cokes were a dime.  My Mom saw to it she went into a hospital, but She believed, and I believed.  She lived on the West Coast, far from us and we wrote letters to communicate.

It was when  phone calls were a quarter that she no longer called me. She no longer wrote.

  I spoke to her on the phone one day, and asked, "Why don't I hear from you anymore?"
"I know what you are doing and feeling.  There is a channel through my brain into yours, and I no longer need phones  to write you to know everything about you.  I communicate through my brainwaves and speak directly to you, Jesus, and God, and they speak back."

AS I age, I learn to speak the language of those who speak to God.  I do know the Bible.  Not completely, because the Bible was written, and translated by MAN, and is therefore NOT perfect.  We need to see beyond the written word for the meaning of each word into the heart of each man, to find the spirit of love, truth, and life.  I have studied languages, and understand the imperfection of translations, and the influence that the individual brings with each translation and the time of the translation(the era).  When you say "PHONE" do you bring the idea cell phone, glass box where you insert a nickle, or do you mean rotary phone?  ERA brings a new meaning to translation to any book, even the Bible.

A Wanderer comes to the house every few weeks, and we talk.  He speaks to me about his connections to God, his beliefs.  I speak the Bible as I know it. "By your works shall ye know HIM.."  I don't believe it is worDs...
He makes soup from street salt and rocks and drinks it.  I teach my children not to follow the worDs of anyone unless their heart tells them it is truth.
When someone believes, it is their belief that is catching.  But what worKs have we witnessed?  What good have we seen?
And let it start with taking care of themselves, having a roof over their heads, food to eat, a job to nurture themselves and others.

Holy Men in India wander,  a class of religious, beg for their daily subsistance.  They pray constantly and no one expects more of them.  Hermits in the woods of the Adirondacks or in Alaska have a hard life surviving off the land with the skills of hunting and gathering people generations ago were required to have.

A few weeks ago my son from Arizona came home, my son from New Mexico came home, I saw my son Jeremy, his daughter and Mother, a sort of "reunion" of seven of my ten children all together in one place.

The wanderers, from Iraq, being soldiers, leaving home, and returning adults, it was meeting different sons, while renewing  family bonds.

Each one individual, each one adult- I could write a book about each one- so very different.  One religious, one atheist, one the ideal father, one with a gay partner,  each teaching me a life lesson as they grew up.

The lesson I learned as I was growing up with my favorite Aunt, when phone calls were a nickle, was to test your reality.  When monks group together as a community, a church has a pasteur, or a family prays together, it is so that we test our reality, and can ask each other, "Is this true, or a figment of my vivid imagination?"
If I begin to drink soup of street salt and rocks,  maybe my reality should be checked with others in my community.

Our inner voices reach out, speak to the universe, but still we need to meet with reality checks, since we never know when we have been punked by Martians selling tickets to Venus, or the Lord Jesus showing us the path to heaven.

Afterall, it is by your worKs, not worDs, we will know HIM.