Signs

When we left church Sunday I saw this amazing rainbow in the clouds and it took me a moment to grasp that it was not my brain playing tricks on me. Crazy. I have never seen anything like it and although I was told that this has been happening quite a bit in Utah, I still take it as a sign from my friend Timmy - that all is good and he's in a more beautiful place than one can imagine.

My logical thinking realizes that the rainbow was made by an explainable occurrence, but my needful heart insists it is something beyond that. I needed something, was feeling so sad about Timmy, and I grasped onto this rainbow.

It could be that my rainbow has nothing at all to do with Tim, but because of my relationship with him the rainbow resonated with me, it had meaning. This is how I see religion and Jesus and any other entity one chooses to embrace with faith. It could all be malarkey, but maybe it's not the entity that matters as much as what we do with our faith. If believing in something beyond our experiences adds a quality to our lives that makes it more beautiful, then it would seem that we would be happier people and happier people do nice things. I am all for people doing nice things! Of course religion also has components of punishment, destruction and obedience, which I believe create fear and fear makes people do horrible things. So let's get rid of those components!

This is why the rainbow meant a lot to me. Tim did not follow the rules as people say we are suppose to in order to get to heaven - he was a good person, he genuinely cared about others and he made mistakes. When he died, I believe he was embraced for all aspects of who he is, and what others may have judged as sinful were part of Timmy and were not bad, just part of him. That rainbow symbolized to me that a lot of what we judge others for on earth is ridiculous and means nothing to an entity worth looking up to...because to me, any entity worth embracing would in turn embrace all of us...ALL of us.

Words I just read by Walt Whitman: Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you; Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.