I've fried my pedometer. No big surprise, since it has some electronic component, and I've worn it on my jeans or skirt every day since September. When Mom and I first started our walking program ( which is an excersise in and of itself since it involves me being up, dressed, awake enough to drive a car and show up at a specific place at 9:00 a.m.) It said that once around the mall was a little over a mile. The next day, it only registered in kilometers. Mind you, it was not set up to register kilometers - at least not in this country. I suspect that something accidentally switched on a function of the thing when it is sold overseas. All I know is that it suddenly said "km" in the corner, which is not something the manual says anything about.....

Then it said that half way around the mall was over 2 miles. Then it just kept blinking. So I set it to counting steps with the goal of doing 10,000 a day. But I don't think it's really working or else it doesn't count all those sideways steps I have to take in my kitchen, on account of I have a table and two chairs in there and also an English Mastiff.

I know that it is not unheard of...that there is something about my electro-chemical- hocus-pokus that renders anything that runs on any type of battery non-functional after prolonged exposure to, well, me. But, lately I've started wondering if there's not more to my quirkiness than just quirks.

Because, lets face it, even allowing for that gift of gab that allows me to turn any event into a fairly funny story ( courtesy of my Irish grandfather) I seem to have a lot of events to work with! On the whole, I'd say that my "luck" is more good than bad....but my life akin to a comment someone made when visiting New England "Hard to tell about the weather here, but you certainly do have a lot of it". It's like the Chinese fortune in a cookie that some people say is actually a curse "May you live in interesting times."

Lately, I have encountered two ideas that are, in some ways, diametrically opposed to each other, and in another way, are very similar about why my life is so eventful.

One came from a friend who is a dyed-in-the-wool born again Christian. This is a person for whom the Bible is the literal Word of God, for whom the stories have only one meaning. Apparent contradictions do not bother her. "God is God and he doesn't owe us a consistent record or anything else. Our instructions are to live by faith." she says, and I assure you that she does to a degree which would be enviable to anyone seriously committed to the practice of ANY faith.

"You should really be glad that all of these bad things have happened to you as you are trying to keep AATH going." She said, "It's such an obvious confirmation that you are doing what The Lord wants you to do."

"I'm not sure I'm following you on that." I said.

"You don't think much about the devil Tea, that's why. He's behind all this trouble - he carries a lot of weight in this world. He only bothers people who are trying to do something good. The rest of the people who are just going along all wrapped up in the world - why should he bother them? But if somebody is really trying to do what God says he pulls out all the stops to get them to quit. And I know you won't."

Well, jeepers, after a vote of confidence like that how could a person quit?!
And I find that kind of a tempting way to think. After all, I think when things happen to me, I am at least partly responsible for them....or, at least I am very aware of the parts that I am responsible for. When I met the Meetinghouse snake, for instance, I cited my soft steps. When I had the problem with the furnace, I thought it was irresponsible of me to have been so unaware of the problem with the chimney: after all, I live in the house the same as The Hub, tenents by the entirety, etc. I ought to make it a point to go down into the basement more than I do and make sure I understand what's going on down there. "My husband does all that" is not only not an excuse....if you ever here me say that please call The Men in Black because it means pod people have taken over my body!

It's kind of nice for someone like me, a person once described as having an "overdeveloped conscience" ( I don't really think that's possible!), to think, just for a minute, "Hmm. Maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe the devil DID make me do it!"

But I don't think that. Sorry, I'm stuck believing in Free Will. It was drilled into my head as a little child :-) !

Anyway, the other person I met, who had a totally different viewpoint of why all this crap was happening to me was a witch in Ellicott City. I mean that she is an ordained Reverend and a practicing Wiccan. I don't know a great deal about the practice of Wicca - it's a faith tradition very very different from my own so even in respectful dialouge I have trouble finding a starting point to grasp where the other party is coming from. And I suspect that it isn't simple, but I may just misunderstand.

Anyhow, the point is that this person's take on my situation was that I had "a lot of healing energy" that was part of the person who I am. Because I don't have too many clients, but I have a deep drive to serve other people, this energy then acted as an "attraction to negativity". I was very unclear on how all of that might work. However, her main point to me was that I was very obviously on the right path and all these troubles/ wierd occurences/ whatever would clear up as my "energy" stopped bouncing off of barriers that were in the way of my destiny due to the fact that we are in the created world.

Well, okay. Substitute "negativity" and "worldy barrier" for "devil" and you've got something fairly close to what my Born Again friend said. Hmm. ( Except for I feel honor bound to point something out here that I have learned in diaglouge with people who practice Wicca: it's very important to them to make clear that they not only don't worship the devil, they don't exactly believe in him)

Anyway, I found her way of looking at the thing tempting too. After all, don't I spend whole days running through life like a hampster on a wheel, my hands and feet practically blazing with frustration? Wouldn't it be great if I could clear my mind / run water over a stone / let all my frustrations, anger and guilt fall into salt crystals and sweep them off of my steps?

But of course, those things, like Christian Sacraments, would only be outward signs of inward changes. If I were still Catholic, I could just as easily light a candle at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary and reflect on how frustrated SHE must have been trying to meet HER destiny. Yep - that would give almost anybody some perspective on their problems!!!

So. Prayer and reflection do seem to be the answers for me. I also looked at the Bible to understand the various ways God-as-I-am-Trying-to-Understand-Him communicated his will to people over time. I'm always struck by how, in the Old Testement, he doesn't seem to pick the most moral people (i.e. Jacob, the liar, Moses, the murderer)...but the people who are willing to live on the edge a little and could hear His voice....even if they don't ultimately want to do what He's telling them!

That lead me to one of the stories in the Old Testement I find the most perplexing. It's Chapter 28 of I Samuel - which is a pretty heavy book in and of itself. But this is the part about the witch of Endor. Actually, I have an RSV which I'm pretty attached to, and it says "the medium at Endor". I encourage everybody to read the story for themselves, but I'll give you the highlights here: Saul has outlawed "the mediums and wizards". He no longer has the favor of The Lord. Samuel, the great prophet, has died. The Philistines are encamped to go to war against him. "And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets." 1 Samuel 28:6

Okay. Dreams and prophets are pretty easy to grasp. I promise if you try to research Urim you could be on it for weeks, possibly years....trust me, this is a hobby of mine. The main thing I get out of this is that these were the "official" or "sanctioned" ways of communicating with the Lord at that time.

So Saul tries to find a medium. He specifically says " a woman who is a medium". ( making me wonder if a woman who could communicate with the Lord in some way was just outside of the structure of things, and therefore banned, or what ) He goes to see the medium at Endor, who, if nothing else, is not stupid tells him to forget it, whoever he is it's not worth risking her life over it. Then, in very short order she recognizes Saul who "Swore to her by the Lord" ( see it's stuff like this we Quaker's don't want to get into when we won't swear oaths....but I digress) that no punishment would come to her if she "brings up" Samuel.

And she does! Now, reading this story, over and over again from the distance of thousands of years and social customs that are not even close to what happened at the time this story was written down I'm thinking, "Whoa! Hold the phone! Brought him up from where?!"

Because, according to the verses, Samuel speaks to Saul. "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?.... Why do you ask me, since the Lord has... become your enemy"

Now, personally, I'm back to gender issue again at this point. This story got read by a lot of rabbis, priests, bishops, etc. At no point in history was it the politically correct thing to say that some woman who was outside of the official means of communicating with God told Saul what was going to happen. Of course, she does tell Saul everything that's going to happen....and it all does happen. If you don't believe that out of the story, then it seems you must believe that Samuel "came up" from somewhere and spoke....which doesn't seem too compatible with what I understand the Jews believed happened to the dead. But maybe it was like today - maybe people believed all kinds of things, and more kinds when they were under a great deal of stress, such as Saul was.

I think that the point of this story is that the will of God cannot be denied. It's so strong that even someone way outside the "mainstream" can see it and wouldn't dare deny it.

So, if that's true, than I guess I'd better just go back to trying to listen to that small still voice....and no matter if it's the devil, or the energy, or my own stupidity for leaving the door unlocked and not checking the furnace, eventually what I'm supposed to do, and how I'm supposed to do it will become clear to me. That's the trouble with waiting and listening. You just don't feel like you're getting much accomplished.