Here’s a thought: The most important things in life that we ever choose, we choose by surrendering to them; accepting them; and allowing them to invite us to see things differently.

Like a palm tree bends to a hurricane and remains standing and unharmed (save perhaps for a few dead fronds that fall away) while tougher trees that refuse to bend break and are torn up. We must bend to circumstances beyond our control and let good things happen as well as bad things.

As long as we can do nothing to make it better, we may as well let it change us. In a good way. In fact, usually good things are the ones beyond our control. Even when it looks like a storm.

“Life sucks!” “I hate my life.” “Things always go wrong for me.” “My life is so boring.”

Have you heard people say these things? I’ll bet you’ve said them yourself. I’ve certainly felt them. But what if you weren’t alive? You couldn’t see anything, feel anything, hear, or taste or smell or know. A robot can hear and see after a fashion, it can move, but it will never feel anything. It’s not alive.

I’m sure the story of Pinocchio is familiar to you. A puppet without strings who can walk and talk; hey, it sounds like a dream come true. He can’t drown. (Or he shouldn’t be able to since he can’t breathe.) It could take a while for him to wear out and he’s fixable. As long as he stays away from fire, heat and cold won’t bother him, anyway. (I had to say it.) So why is he so desperate to be a real boy?

Not that real is a matter of what you’re made of, it’s not. Real is a matter of love. Love is life. And a boring life is one not filled up with love, a bad life is one that doesn’t let love in, and a life you hate is one you haven’t realized the power of love to transform. Being brave and truthful is all very well, but not until you’re unselfish does it mean anything. You can be dying to be something you aren’t (such as a person when you’re a wooden puppet,) but it’s not till you stop complaining and make the most of what you’ve got that you’ll ever change. We’re put in our form for a reason. It may not even be the right form for us, but we are to learn what we can from it.

Your body isn’t what makes you real, it’s your mind. If you are capable of choice than you are already real. But you may not know it. Hence, we don’t taste and see and hear and feel, we just sit around and act bored. Or depressed. Or both.

Suffering is what makes us become more real. You can be a real thing but not be alive. (We use the word real so often, it has different meanings.) When we suffer it forces us to feel and to prioritize, and that’s when we understand what really matters.

If we let love in, and choose to keep it, then we begin to wake up. We start to see that life is beautiful and exciting. Have you ever just been thankful that you could breathe? Or walk? Or see? If you can’t feel thankful yet, than try blindfolding yourself and walking around for an hour, or tying one arm behind your back, or moving on one leg. Or even just try imagining what that would be like. Imagine if you couldn’t move your limbs. Chances are you know or have known someone who’s been in that position. Try something wacky and stand in front of an inanimate object and tell yourself all the things that you can do that it can’t. Take a bite of food and be glad you have taste buds; go outside and smell a plant and be glad you have a nose and don’t have to use your feet like a fly. I’ll bet you’ll crack yourself up thinking of all the goofy things you can do. And that’s good because laughter makes you smarter. I’ll close with a well known scripture anyone would like. “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well.” (Psalm 139:14)

What does dangerous mean?

Who even asks that question. I do I guess. Maybe it’s because the world is a dangerous place to live and being passive and nice is not working out. There is republican candidate Donald Trump, now don’t anyone get excited. This is not a political post; I’m merely using Trump as an example of someone who seems aggressive and not so nice. Frankly I think that’s the reason he’s doing so well. Would I vote for him? Maybe not. But I admire his complete un-intimidated approach.  I don’t know what the dictionary would say, but my personal definition of dangerous would be anything that threatens to foil your plans. It hit me the other day that beauty is dangerous to someone who wishes to spread ugliness. Gentleness is dangerous to someone who wants to spread cruelty and harshness. Actually it is not strength that makes you dangerous, it’s power.

What is power? Just that. It’s the ability to do something. I may have the strength to write, but if my fingers hurt too much or my keyboard isn’t working I do not have the power. You can have the strength to lift the weight of a pencil but if you have a paralyzed hand you don’t have the power. A machine may be strong enough to operate tasks that a man could not, but if it’s not plugged into the power it is useless.

When it comes to power men and women have it different. Men often possess the more obvious power. Physical strength, survival skills, technical know-how. Women have the unsung powers because they have the subtle ones. Mothering skills, craftiness, the ability to beautify life. There are shared traits between genders, but there are traits and there are strengths; and there are powers.

Back to the subject of danger. There is a bad kind of danger. But we need to stop being afraid of danger. To fear danger is eventually to fear yourself, because you can’t help being dangerous. The only thing you can choose is who you’ll be dangerous to. That’s my thoughts for now, watch out for my coming posts–Natasha

Psychosomatic–1. Of pertaining to a physical disorder that is caused or notably influenced by emotional factors. 2. Pertaining to or involving both the mind and the body.

Hypochondria— An excessive preoccupation with one’s health usually focusing on some particular symptom; excessive worry about one’s health.

Neurosis— A functional disorder (isn’t that an oxymoron?) disorder in which feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts, and physical complaining without objective evidence of disease…dominate the personality.

Why am I giving you these definitions? because I have an example of someone who was all three of those things.

I present for your consideration Colin, from “The Secret Garden.” In that book the main character Mary Lennox goes to live with her uncle, who has one son he never looks at. Mary finds the son, Colin, and in a strange manner befriends him. He is a selfish, worrisome boy who is deathly afraid of having a hunchback when he grows up, like his fther. Finally one night he throws a tantrum and Mary storms in and tells him to stop. The surprised Colin chokes out:

Colin: I felt the lump–I felt it. I knew I should. I shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die.

Mary: (fiercely) You didn’t feel a lump! If you did it was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps. There’s nothing the matter with your horrid back–nothing but hysterics.

Really? And all this time I thought–but what happens next? Mary looks at his back to see if there are any lumps and says.

Mary: There’s not a single lump there! There’s not a lump as big as a pin–except backbone lumps, and you can only feel them because you’re thin…there’s not a lump as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again. I shall laugh!

“No one but Colin knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him. If he had ever dared to let himself ask questions–if he had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself.”

Do, you mean there was really nothing wrong with him after all? Nope. And ten to one there’s noting wrong with you either. Or if there is it’s nothing you can’t fix with a few changes in diet, exercise, and fresh air. Take it from someone who suffered from spiritual and emotional psychosomatic tendencies and hypochondria and neurosis; it’ll steal every ounce of joy from you life. Don’t let it. Your mental and physical health is completely up to you. Colin grew nicer, and learned to walk. He got strong. He just needed to be snapped out of his funk. To be woken up–they all needed to be woken up–from the insanity of doing the same thing over and over.

So, go for it folks! I assure you your problems usually seem worse than they really are. At any rate, quit tantrum-ing and make the best of it.

I had a great time at camp.

Truly it was the best I ever went to, miraculous things happened right in front of me.

Things you couldn’t explain in the natural.

That may sound really creepy, but it isn’t, we’ve all had things in our lives that couldn’t be explained. It’s just part of living.

My perspective is no longer quite the same, my beliefs haven’t changed, I just believe it even more than before. That happens when you’re honestly convinced of a thing. (Like that you hate a certain type of music more each time you hear it.)

I have writings on some less talked on subjects that I want to post soon, I appreciate all the views by the way, I got a ton while I was gone. Don’t worry if you like my quest series because I plan to finish it. I might even start trying to upload images but I’m not sure how to do that so don’t hold your breath.

If anyone wants to know what the single most important thing I tool away from camp is, then I’ll try to sum it up:

It’s not impossible. Whether you think of your own private problems or of large scale ones involving other people, it is not impossible to solve it. Completely. You need the power that comes form Someone bigger than any problem.

I know that’s not very exciting sounding at first, but imagine every problem and trouble you have right now, what if you were just told the answer? Or what if it was just gone? That would be exciting