​It was an especially boring Christmas, which I admit to with a tinge of guilt.  It should be the ‘besttest’ day of the year, but it has seldom been so.  Usually it is Christmas Eve, but that is beside the point of this little blog.  Rather, I use the boredom of this year’s Christmas to excuse my exceptionally poor taste in movie selection that night.  Through some odd coincidence, I ended up on an off-channel that featured old sci-fi movies that had something to do with Christmas, however vague.  One was “Santa Defeats the Martians” which was not, as one critic said, so bad that it was good.  Rather, it was sooo bad that it was bad, plain and simple.  Another, “Message from Mars” (I think), was not as bad, but kind of bad because of cheap production.  Some would say that the early-1950’s Red Scare anti-communist propaganda made it really, really bad, but I disagree.  Rather, it was exactly this that made this throw-away a marvel to watch.
 
Along with having Peter Graves, of “Mission Impossible” and “Airplane” fame as the leading man, that is.  Tall, blond, dressed in a little sweater-vest that made him so totally domesticated that his image alone might explain the hippy rebellion of the 60’s, he did add some interest to the film.  Again, though, its greatness – as I see it - was exactly in the over-the-top message: the commies are evil; they are plotting to control the world; and most importantly, they are coming (or would like to come) to crush our all-American religions.   Objectively, all but the first was unquestionably true, and the first certainly WAS true from a classic American perspective, but it is the last bit that most interested me - and just how it was presented, and by Martians, no less.
 
The plot is based on Grave’s invention, a communication device run by hydrogen that has such power (in 1952, that is all one needed to say: “holy crap – Hydrogen! – it’s gotta be powerful!”) that its signals can reach Mars.  He tries Morse code for some time before he starts getting code back – code that can be deciphered into messages!  The Army gets involved, and with that, the press, and with that, the whole world learns of it and becomes entranced.  Back in the USSR and the Eastern Block, however, they realize that getting these messages first can only give their enemies an advantage.  Fortunately, they find a former Nazi scientist in Poland or some other Slavic nation who also has a hydrogen-powered radio.  With this, he is able to listen in on the American radio, and even receive the messages before the Americans.  And, oh, these messages are doosies!  The Martians tell the Earthlings that on Mars they have increased the yield per acre 1,000 fold, so that they have no hunger; this causes the futures market on grain to collapse on Earth.  Then they tell the Earthlings that all their machines run on “cosmic” energy, making it universally cheap, which sends the oil and coal industries to the bottom of the market.  The free world reels from this, and the wicked communists with their Nazi scientists are thrilled. 
 
But then comes the great question.  Spurred on by his faithful and compassionate wife, Graves asks the Martians: with all that power, how do you not blow yourselves up?   Reply the Martians: because we have taken to heart the words of the master who brought to us the same message that he brought to you some 2,000 years (7 Martian lifetimes) ago.  Why did WE not listen?  Why did WE not understand the significance of the Sermon on the Mount?
 
Ho – boy – that changed everything.  The free world went back to church in droves, and more importantly, the suppressed masses of Godless Eastern Europe dug up their icons and vestments and Bibles to revive what the commies had taken away.  They were shot by the thousands, but the numbers, and God, prevailed.  Thus, thanks to the revival of God in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union fell. 
 
That is the amazing part of the movie, because in time it turned out to be true.  The fall of the Soviet Union was presaged by a religious movement in Poland that was given its greatest power – the power of Right - by the Catholic Church in the form of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who rallied the people to maintain their faith in the eventual triumph of the spirit.  Because of his resoluteness in the face of Soviet hostility, the Cardinal was made Pope (John Paul II) in 1978.  Now as the highest (human) power of the Church, he exhorted the Poles to maintain pressure on the government through their continued faith, which became a rallying cry behind the Solidarity Movement of the 1980’s.  It was this movement which dealt the first great blow to Soviet hegemony.   By 1991, the Soviet Union was no more, and religion, even in Russia, came roaring back.  Marx’s “opiate of the masses” triumphed over materialist ideology, even in the face of its overwhelming power.
 
Just like the movie told us.  The propaganda, as ridiculous as it sounded, was actually true, making this movie one of the unlikeliest of prophets.   As was Sister (to become Saint) Faustina.  A Polish peasant, she was called to become a nun from childhood, when she had begun to have visitations of Christ.  She fought the hierarchy over her visions, which the Church thought were the hallucinations of a hysteric that were pulling the people away from the stolid dogmas of the Church.  As it happened, one such ordinary common Polish person who was pulled towards her was a boy in Krakow named Karol Wojtyla, who worshipped before the painting of a vision she had seen of the Christ.  It was this vision that helped to guide Karol’s future actions. 
 
We know now at least one great reason why he was guided, although it sounds ridiculous to say that a painting in a church put out by a renegade nun caused the collapse of an empire.  Pure coincidence, and as corny as the movie.   And yet, a great empire fell, and it certainly seems likely that its foundations were first shaken by the power of religious faith inspired by a peasant girl in Poland who believed in the Sermon on the Mount and the man who spoke it (Pope John Paul II presided over Sister Faustina’s canonization in 2000).    

 
 
 
 
 
                            

A repeat of the Christmas essay, "The Night My Father Shot Santa" under Essays in the website.  This is also in my new book of essays, Beneath the Turning Stars.  ​FK

​I’ve just finished a book of almost porcelain quality, one as fragile and beautiful as a poem.   Let Your Life Speak, by Parker Palmer, is an autobiography of an extremely sensitive and moral man in a quest to do what is best for the world.  Being of such a sensitive nature, he of course upbraids himself for hidden motives in his career path – for no one can call himself perfect – but has found that even this dark side has its reasons, or seasons, as he put it in his concluding essay.  The book itself deserves at least one essay on it alone, for it speaks of True Self and how it fights to escape social confines, even at the expense of health and superficial sanity.  This is not quite what I wish to talk about here, though.  Rather, it is to what he implies about the need for community.
 
At one point, Palmer takes a leave of absence from a good position at a university because of a feeling of incompleteness.  He takes a one year appointment at a Quaker community center, where he unexpectedly finds himself for the next ten years.  While there, he learns of the importance of silent listening to the inner self, and also of invested community.  In fact, whether he knows it or not, that is what his book is primarily about – not so much the quest for the inner self by itself, but for the inner self as a member of a community of inner selves.  I stress here the “inner self,” for the community he strives for and sometimes reaches is a community of people grounded in soul, not in the need for mutual approval based on some social indicators.  That is, a community striving to become a god-touched people who do not live from the law, as did the people of Moses, but rather of the law within the depth of the heart, as did, or should, the people of Jesus (as Jesus said, he came not to dismiss the law, but to fulfill it, something only accomplished from the heart).   Learning the heart, we find, is good, but being able to live this together is so much better.
 
And so we come to Facebook and electronic social media.  I have read and enjoyed some of the satirical essays on youth and their surprising lack of social interaction due precisely to too much interaction over The Device.  On the face of it, it is hilarious: 4 or 6 Millennials sitting around a diner table in absolute silence as they text to others who are miles away.  Scratch beneath the surface, though, and most of us oldsters have found deeper problems associated with this.  As one grandmother of many (who is younger than I, by the way) told me of her recent Christmas visit to family in Iowa, “I was with my  nieces almost the whole day as we traveled to shop and eat in my car.  I hardly heard two sentences from either one the whole time.  They were on their Devices instead.  And when I did talk to them, they were barely able to communicate.  They had such low self-esteem.  They each thought they were fat and needed to diet (they are both teens and as skinny as rails). 

​They had low self-esteem; felt they needed to diet; had trouble talking to real people: these are signs of people who live by the values of others.  They look for approval from without, but hide from direct contact because they feel of little value, for what are they but skin-covered bags of inadequacies?  Worse, we all know what lack of face-to-face communication has brought: comments of extreme hostility, even of hatred.  Without the leavening effect of another’s presence, the self-doubt explodes into offensive attacks meant, if they understood, as desperate defensive measures.  Yet they do not, cannot stop, because what they are looking for is approval, and ultimately, community.  What they instead find is the hardness of external social pressure and ostracism.  So they go back for more, with hope that is always broken, and then more in a vicious circle.  What a mess.
 
And how familiar.  I have caught myself at night checking the email an extra time, or maybe even an extra-extra time before going to bed to get - what?  I stopped last night to think about it, and it was obvious; I was looking for something to bring me somehow from the depths of impending night.  I was looking for a saving word of community to make the coming darkness not what it often is – one of odd dreams and quiet desperation.  I was, and probably will continue to be, just like our youthful hyper-social - social misfits, desperate for something I could not really name. 
 
With the reading of Palmer’s book, though, at least I do know that name: genuine community.  The Mormons call themselves the Community of Saints, which I can sneer at because they are probably no more saintly than the rest of us, but that would be more than worthless, for that is what they strive to be.  At least they know what they want, as difficult as that might be, and that is half the battle, knowing what we want – need - for fulfillment.  And like St Paul’s “Love”, this community is not possessive or judgmental or unkind.  It allows one to be oneself – in fact, gently requires one be oneself – and joins us together in mutual respect and support.  For in the end, in the depth of the soul, all are made of God, and all, or at least most, bear hidden within them the wings of angels.  Angels do not need to tell each other what to be or how to behave, or what size dress they should wear.  Instead, they form a chorus in witness to God in their, in your, and in all being.  They do not wish to stop your song, but to sing along, in harmony.  If Facebook could do this, it would take over the world, but it can’t.  Only this community of saints, this chorus of our angels, can, and it is always there for us to find, right there, free of charge.    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                            

Today, a new essay, Mouse Trap, ​in the essay section of the website.  FK

​It is often difficult to watch the news, particularly that concerning our own country.  So many times I am mystified by the absolute malice some show towards certain politicians, political parties, and the country itself.  I am mystified because I have lived elsewhere.  I have lived in places like Venezuela and Mexico where there is mass corruption and little justice, places where the only goodwill to be found is among the people themselves.  But in the U.S.?  Not perfect, no way, but justice is often had, and almost always by those who make the issues known.  Few are starving in the streets, and those mostly due to addiction and mental illness.  Education is free to those who cannot pay, medical is to be had by all, at least in emergencies, roads get fixed, and when corrupt politicians are uncovered, they lose their jobs or go to jail - and those who uncover them don’t die afterwards in mysterious accidents. 
 
My point is not to wave the flag.  America will never make you happy, but it is so ordered as to allow YOU to become happy, with enough opportunities and security to be able to do so.   But many unhappy people blame the nation for their unhappiness, as if a slight of justice in the courts or a case of corruption in the oil fields or state house has caused this perpetual unhappiness.   It does not take unusual perception to grasp the fallacy, yet still, there they are, certain that somehow a change in this law or that football mascot will make their discontent go away.  Why?
 
This weekend, we saw the movie, “The Case for Christ,” based on the autobiographical book of the same name by Lee Strobel.   Strobel was a hard-bitten, award-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune in the ‘70’s and 80’s (the backdrop of 70’s décor in the movie was hilarious, including Strobel’s spray-can helmet hair).  Towards the beginning of the movie, he and his wife and child are happily eating out at a restaurant when his little girl begins to choke on bubble gum.  She is saved by a nurse who happened to be nearby.  The nurse then tells them that it was no coincidence but God’s work, as she was going to go elsewhere, but a little voice told her to think again – you get the idea.  Later, Strobel’s wife contacts the nurse to thank her, and gets invited to her charismatic church.  In short time, she becomes a convert. 
 
Lee is not amused.  He is an atheist because to him, the idea of our once having a god on earth is ridiculous, as is having a god itself.  As the movie progresses, Lee’s atheism becomes a beast.  He belittles his wife and comes near to separating from her.  Finally, he decides to do what good journalists do – investigate the facts.  He is certain he can prove that the Christ story is a myth, and with this indisputable proof convince his wife to leave her madness.  As it turns out, the reverse happens.  Visiting professionals in several fields, he learns that the journalistic evidence for Christ – that is, having hundreds of eye witnesses and numerous historical and biological facts at hand - is overwhelming.  Eventually he …well, I won’t spoil the ending for the reader, although it is not hard to guess, even though the story is, overall, true.
 
The point here being – why was Lee Strobel so upset by his wife’s conversion?  I can say with some certainty that if my wife converted to a belief that I did not share, I would not be concerned unless bad things – like, say, long periods of abstinence or drinking Kool-Aid – were involved. 
 
In the movie, we learn quickly that it is a daddy issue.  He hates his dad, who he believes was cold and unloving in his upbringing.  God the Father and his Son are dad, and dad’s a jerk who broke Lee’s heart.  Therefore, this other Father would also get no respect, no worship, nada, because, as a father, he, too, must be inadequate.  This is not the case with many atheists, whose “problem”, if we see their lack of belief as a problem, is due to an inability to escape from scientific materialism.  But those are the atheists who do not hate.  The haters, the strivers, those who mock and scorn – in these, there seems to exist a deep personal problem. 
 
We can expand on this.  When people react with hatred and violence to issues or others who do not a pose a grave threat, it does seem probable that they are really dealing with an interior issue that has been externalized.   There are causes that require harsh action, but is this true with the fundamentals of America?  And is this true for a non-mandatory belief in God?  As an example: The book, A Handmaiden’s Tale, was written during the Reagan era when it was supposed by his opponents that his silent majority would turn American into a born-again concentration camp.  This did not happen, it did not come close to happening, and really, it was never going to happen.  Yet the fear was real, and still is very much alive today.  It all seems so silly to those who do not have this particular “issue.”
 
But we ALL have psychological issues, including the concepts people who do believe in God have of Him.  We are all scarred and distorted in some way, but I think the effects of that can be moderated with careful insight.  When we hate, does the rationalization for it hold water?  Or, from another perspective, is hate the most effective response, even if what we hate might be worthy of it?  In most cases, probably not.  Hating does not make us feel better in the long run, and probably hurts the very effort being made to bring down what we hate, for others see our darkness more clearly than we do – and know to reject it. 
 
And so we come to the Golden Rule – to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.  Beneath the surface of that rule we are also advised to understand the ‘other’ as we understand ourselves, for it is only in this way that we can have sympathy for them.  In having sympathy, we cannot have hatred.  We can hate certain aspects of the other’s belief, but in seeing the totality of the human, we cannot harbor hatred towards that other – who is our self in almost every way.  And so we come to treat the other as ourselves – which is not to demonize, to condemn, or to scourge.   
 
Here we find, as is often the case, that the rules of wisdom are called wise for a reason, for if we would extend ourselves to others, we would not develop the complexes that lead to violence.  In so doing, we would not cause others to develop their own complexes.  The cycle would end.   And just like that, we would have a better world.  Easy, simple, and infinitely difficult – as Lee Stobel found.  Sometimes, one needs a laborious – even complex - trip to OZ to find out the basic truth that it all really begins and ends at home.  FK
 


                            

​
​Hudson wasn’t the only post copy write author I came across on my last Amazon shopping spree (where my new book can be bought as well – just sayin’).  More famous in the spiritual world is Rudolf Steiner, who bubbled up with Theosophy and Gurdjieff in the cross-cultural rush of spiritualism at the turn of the 19th century.   This one, How to Know Higher Worlds (1909 ed.), means pretty much what the title says.  There are some troubles in it from my perspective, as it instructs one to contact beings of all sorts in the invisible realm, but it largely avoids the horrible pitfalls of another spiritualist of the time, Allister Crowley, whose flirtation with Satanism was as ugly as it sounds.  No – with Steiner we are to expand our love for humanity and all things as we grow, in no way transgressing conventional morality along the way.  We are to avoid the demonic realm.  Just how, I will have to find out on later nights as I finish the book, but there is one peculiarity in his writings that seldom arises in my own contemplation of the spiritual – the importance of colors.
 
Some time ago I wrote a blog about an anthropological paper that speculated that the ancient Greeks could not see the color blue, so much so that they did not have a word for it.  In the Iliad, for instance, the sky is only said to be “bright” – not bright blue, just bright.  Behind the article is the linguists’ theory that one sees or notices only those things that are named.  How new things come into the cultural conscience happens by intercultural contact or changes in perception of a notable personality – that is, a breakthrough by a local genius.  I have argued against this theory in part, but let’s go with it in general, for it is probably true to an extent: we do notice things much more when they have been previously brought to our attention, and most certainly after they have been named. 
 
Steiner takes this much further.  In fact, he may have been the one who popularized the notion of auras – that each one of us (and all things) have an aura of color depending on our – or its - level of consciousness.  Humans would share in some colors, as we take up a particular niche, but also differ in others, as our personalities and levels of consciousness vary. 
 
As with so many things, once we open the box of an idea, it always gets bigger.  For the linguists, they must have at least toyed with the idea that the perception of certain colors might have to do with the level of consciousness of the people in a certain culture.  That is, that a certain intellectual or spiritual capacity must first be reached before a color can come to notice.  This goes beyond what the researchers stated, and for good reason, as it drags one relentlessly toward the spiritual dimension.  But we have to ask: for a people to see blue, what thought process has to change?  The change would not be technological, but an interior one that shaped the conscious itself.  It would have to emanate from some deep realm that those of us unafraid of materialist ridicule call the spiritual realm.  It just might be that Steiner was on to something with his colors.
 
What, then, of the color blue?  What might have changed in the Greek mind for them to be able to perceive it?
 
I would have to pour over the ancient literature and current ethnologies of the world in depth to be able to answer this question with assurance, but the color blue has a very prominent place in our own civilization, which is partly based on ancient Greek culture.  What makes us so different in thought from the Greeks and Romans, however, was the introduction to the West of Judaism and Christianity.  And what is prominent in early Christianity is the color blue.
 
Blue is the sky, and the Judaic concept of Jehovah was as a sky god.  But the Greeks had sky gods as well, sitting way up high on Mt Olympus.   What changed?  I believe it was the concept of women and of the feminine itself – or rather, the recognition of their, and its, importance.  Mediterranean cultures in general had, and still largely have, a deification of the mother coupled with a deprecation of the feminine.  Mom is a saint, but all you other women, pah!  This culture area has long been strongly patriarchal, emphasizing the toughness and strength of the man.  That changed with Christianity.  Suddenly, it was all about love, about understanding, about peace – all the traits of the perfect mother.  It seems to me that Christianity brought femininity out of the house and into the street.  It was Mother Mary herself who was publicly deified for these traits, and her color was…blue.  Virgin blue.  Sky blue; perfect, pure blue. 
 
More facts are needed to prove this particular notion of blue, but since both spiritualists and social scientists agree that color is culturally important and contingent, let’s take the next logical step: that consciousness filters how we perceive the world in general, and in big ways. If our perception of colors is contingent, then so might be our notion of shapes, of natural cycles, and of humans ourselves.  Certainly dogs don’t see us as we see ourselves; could, then, our self-perception and our perception of the fundamentals of the universe change with consciousness? 
 
The Roman Catholic apologist Tertullian stated that we were more or less “angels in training.”  Could this be our higher, more spiritual form?  And could our vision be so altered that the lion will really lay down with the lamb?  To what degree might consciousness actually alter what we can see and do, and decide just how we and the whole world will interact?
 
It is my contention that we are here in the world as we understand it because we share a certain consciousness that forms our world.  The color blue, or the lack of it, could alert us to how true this is.  Somewhere, from a niche in a church or from a bathtub cut in half, the Virgin Mary might be telling us from the holy blue of her robe that we only have to redirect our minds to change the world.  FK
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

 


                            

​I had read of this 19th century British writer, WH Hudson, since way back in grad school.  He had written a book called Green Mansions about the Amazon that anthropologists had found amusing because of its projections of European sensibilities and desires onto the aggregate communities of Amazon Indians.  Lately, I have come upon him again and again in my investigations of the spiritual, and at last I looked him up on our digital Amazon to see what they had on him.  Since he is dead and his works are long past the copy write laws, old Hudson came cheap: 12 of his complete works for $1.99.  Having little to lose, I clicked on it almost as an afterthought.
 
What I met with on reading the first book, A Crystal Age, was both less and more than I had expected.  Less in that I had forgotten just how – let’s say – baroque, or curly-cued the writing of that time and country was.  On and on went each description, and more, on and on went tales of passion, of burnings in the breast, of “lingering melancholy,” and so on.  It was astonishingly boring, although I say this with caution.  I have often looked at my own writing and thought that it, too, presented too many words for what I wished to convey.  I, too, am trapped in the style of my time.  To date, experimental writing has not solved the problem.  Perhaps it will never be solved, as words are only symbols of ideas, but, man, that Victorian era stuff was thick as a Highland brogue.   
 
Back to the point: it was also more than expected, for it broadly and honestly explored religion and spirituality and the human condition.  In A Crystal Age, a young man falls down a hill and is suddenly transported to earth 100,000 years later.  Here, people have learned to live as the Good Book tells us (although without the exclusionary presence of the Good Book), in gentle brotherly love.  Trouble is, most have lost the thorn of sexual passion.  That is where our interloping primitive Englishman comes into the equation.  But there are many other ideas considered as well.  For instance, at one point, our hero hopes for the health of the one ‘mother of the clan’ by proclaiming, “I hope to God that she is relieved of her suffering and regains her health,” (my recall), whereby the father of the clan admonishes him sternly.  (Here, again my recall): “Why would you do that?  Does not our Father know all that is best for us, and is he not the most loving father?  Then why would you ask Him to intercede with one’s life, for it is already as it should be.  If there is pain and sickness, He put it there for our best purpose.”  And so on. 
 
Which brings us exactly to the notion and utility of prayer.  When we read of Jesus when he is in prayer, he does not ask for anything, but rather prays for communion.  It is only after the last supper in Gethsemane when he asks his father to “spare me this bitter cup” but then quickly adds, “but thou will be done.”  Even in the face of agonizing death, his example is to accept what God gives us, for, if we are faithful to Him, it will always be for the best in the long run.
 
Except.  In our studies of the Gospel of Mathew, we read in chapter 7 that God will give us what we pray for, for what father would “give his son a rock instead of a loaf, or a serpent instead of a fish”?  We are to see God as Abba, a generous father, and to openly ask for what we wish. 
 
Many of us have at least heard of this passage before, and probably nearly as many have done what I do upon hearing it: we think, “yeah, sure, and I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya.”  Anyone past the age of 8 knows that we usually do not get what we pray for.  The less bitter among us tell ourselves that, well, God gives us what is best for us, not what we THINK is best for us - which is as true for us as it was for Jesus in that one moment when he wished to live and not suffer.  But by this, then, do we learn that we should only pray for communion ith God and never for anything or anyone?
 
A once-famous Catholic Archbishop whose name I cannot recall said, “When I pray, the coincidences in my life increase.  When I do not, they decrease.”  Not of great eloquence, that, which, considering WH Hudson, is probably good, for it gets us straight to the point.  This is not about us getting only what God wants for us from his far-away mansion in the sky, nor is it about us getting that pony we always wanted for Christmas.  Rather, prayer – getting in touch with the holy – keeps us in touch with the holy.  In so doing, we are connected with the deeper mechanisms of things, such that “coincidences” keep occurring.  These coincidences are not lucky accidents – rather, they are connections with other things that we suddenly begin to see.  These were there all along, these connections, but in seeing them, we begin to understand better the nature of our existence, and in doing so, our desires gradually begin to coincide with the greater reality.  This is mysterious, but also easy to understand, for in seeing how our lives are connected to so much more, our notion of our place in the universe changes.  We then do not care for, or do not care as much for, that pony or that sports car or that perfect mate.  Why should we, when the whole universe seems to be bending itself towards us?  We understand that by losing the soul to gain the earth, we lose almost everything.  With this, our desires change, to say the least.
 
The Gospels always tell us that it is the man of faith who is favored, and it must be this man who Jesus is talking about.  But this man does not accept what God gives him on faith alone.  Rather, in prayer, in meditation, he learns more about what he is in the cosmos, and as he grows, he learns better how to pray, and what to pray for.  As he grows, his prayers become more effective – but his desires also become more in line with the cosmic order, for that is what gives him greater and greater pleasure as it comes into his life.  So it might be that at first, when this man prays for a fish or a loaf, he may only get the bitter opportunity to work overtime at his crumby job.   Then coincidences begin to happen, ones that may or may not work to his benefit, but which give him greater insight.  In time, the fish and the loaf loose much of their importance, just as a dent in the new car would suddenly fade in light of, say, a discovery of a terminal disease by the doctor.  The smaller is always swallowed by the greater, and with that, our prayers change. 
 
For the most part, I’m still at the wishing- for- a -pony level, but that link with coincidences gave me the clue.  Yes, realizing that an invisible and powerful force is working in our lives is a real game-changer.  Everything else begins to look small in comparison.  And with that, everything starts to come together – faith, prayer, and – perhaps – prayers answered.  No pony for Christmas, maybe, but instead a stocking full of divine knowledge, wonder and awe.  I pray that this is what I’d pray for, and what I’d get after the pony got old.   FK