I talked with some friends the other day about this irrational fear I have. Funny how you can KNOW something is irrational, yet you are compelled to acknowledge that despite it being irrational, one believes it. If you think about it, God is rather irrational. There is only faith and no objective evidence of his/her existence.

What this DOES make me wonder about is WHAT does God influence, or control, of the things that occur on earth? If, "Everything works together for good to them that love God," then how do we account for the God-loving Muslims, and the God loving Christians and the God-loving Jews all being in conflict, unto death, with one another? How is that working together for good?

Someone suggested to me that I wouldn't be as.....empathic or sympathetic of a person if I had not been victimized. What kind of God permits people to attain insight through pain, so they can help others who s/he permitted to live through pain? THAT is irrational!

I acknowledge that crap happens to everyone and that I'm not exempt. Maybe crap doesn't have a moral label like "good" or "bad." Maybe crap is just crap. You've had your share of crap. Where is God in the crap? How do you live with the irrationality of the pain that has come into your life? Where is God in the middle of the grief that has come your way, and do you ever feel that God brought it to your door?

God and faith are so.....inscrutible. If God is not logical, then the world isn't logical or rational. How does one unravel all this? How do you make sense of pain and suffering in the world? To me it really seems to scream there is no God, rather than there is one. Yet, I believe. How irrational is that?

A dear friend with a long life and sensible thinking seems to believe I am a strong person. She is adamant about it. I have told her that I don't feel strong, but she comes right back at me that I am, and that is that, as far as she is concerned. If I didn't admire her so much and know what a sensible and strong person she is, I couldn't hear this. She has lived through her fair share of grief, sorrow and tribulation, but she thinks I'm strong. How can a person ever get a realistic picture or internal image of him/herself? Will I always be a sniviling victim in my mind? Will I always be afraid? Will there never be a time when I can just live and feel "normal"? Does there ever get to be a time in the recovery process where anxiety isn't a constant companion? I would like to think so, but I see no evidence of it just yet. I live in hope though.

I'm obsessed lately with thoughts of my mother's impending death. Demons might not just be dark forces that appear in children's books. Demons might jump off the pages of the Bible and into your life in the present. What if there were demons for real? What if they lived and breathed and walked among us day-to-day? How can you recognize a demon when you see or encounter one? Are they simply people who are BAD? Perhaps evil is a theolgical issue that doesn't move into the world of morality. Evil doesn't exist as a scientific concept. It lives only in spiritual, metaphysical and theological concepts. All of which resist quantification and qualification. There are no ways to test for evil with an MRI or a blood test. It's a gut feeling. You know it when you encounter it. Somehow it's different than just being BAD. Bad people are folks who lie, cheat or steal over and over. Not just now and again -- we all lie, cheat or steal in small ways, occasionally. But those who do it chronically and without remorse, those become the bad people. What distinguishes bad people from evil people? Evil people cross a line. Evil people not only don't have remorse, conscience or regret, they move forward with gusto doing those immoral acts that the rest of the world finds reprehensible. Evil people press forward and cross every line but are somehow wary enough to avoid ticking off people in authority. That's when they get in trouble, when they tick off the authorities. The rest of the time, they just make "normal" people suffer. Sometimes it's by intention or not, but they still effect those they come in contact with. Bad people bring chaos into their own lives. Evil people bring chaos into the lives of everyone around them. As I see it anyway. As I see it today.

Sok, if someone evil has brought chaos into your life, how do you banish it? How do you wash your soul clean of the chaos they have inflicted on you? Do you simply go, "Not me anymore. Keep your bad karma and your bad vibes and get out of my head and my life." And it's gone.

No, it just doesn't happen that way. Evil is insidious and it contaminates it's victims. It gets inside their heads and haunts them for life. At least it does for this victim. The demon moves from being an evil living entity to invading a host through unconscious revictimization. It's something that's inculcated into the victim and lives on no matter if the offender is alive anymore or not. They become a demon in death. In death the offender frightens the victim with the residue of evil that can't seem to be shaken off. I can't speak for others, but that is how it is for me. How do you protect yourself from the demons of evil that invade your consciousness and unconsciousness? How do you recognize evil and banish it from inside your Self? I need to know. I need to know. Am I nuts? Are these ideas crazy? Are they any different than what Eli Weisenthal struggles with? Or is that an eogtistical and narcisistic comparison? Where is "right" in the middle of the ideas of bad, and evil? What is the way out? I'd really, really like to know.