#life

The Upside Down World ~ The Blog

Mar 22, 2021
6 min

On Living and Warring

Years ago one of my sisters got lost for several days while hiking in the mountains. There was a massive search which culminated in her being rescued via a helicopter from the middle of a river several miles from where she had gone missing. Thankfully, she didn’t suffer anything more than dehydration and some trench foot from the experience. But when I spoke with her after it was all over she told me something which I’ve thought of often over the years. She explained that at

Mar 8, 2021
7 min

How To Lose 50 lbs Without Even Trying! (Or Not)

My after picture. The before looks like this but slightly bigger. I lost 50 lbs in 6 months and now weigh less than it says on my driver’s license. How often does that happen? And I wasn’t even trying to lose weight! I haven’t been this size since before I got pregnant with my 16 year old. How awesome is that? Meh, not particularly awesome, actually. Like most people who lose weight quickly without trying, the rapid weight loss was a sign that something was wrong. Severe trau

Mar 21, 2020
6 min

Finding Peace In a Time of Dread

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a freight train barrelling down on you and all you can do is wait for it to hit before. You’re waiting for the power to be turned off. The doctor to give the terrible diagnosis. For the court date to come, the judgment to be rendered, the relationship to irreparably break. Where you’ve just stood and watched the cracks form as the world starts to fall out from under your feet. Even if you’ve experienced it all before, waiting for the freight tr

Feb 10, 2020
3 min

Rules for Discernment – Particular vs Universal

Once upon a time I had the chance to spend time with an unusual man who was a massage/hypnotherapist who believed we’d all be nudists after Jesus’ return. Which I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with except for the fact that I live on the great northern tundra of the upper midwest where it’s Fahrenheit 9 degrees outside right now. Not long after I met him, he advised me that God wanted us to stop thinking and just trust His lead. He'd had a spiritual experience a few year

Jan 14, 2017
2 min

Several Times a Year, This Comes to Mind

Several years ago I came across a story about an amazing little book called Be Bold With Bananas which is described by a high-end art book seller on Abe Books as “an imaginative cook book issued in the 1970s by the South African Banana Board” and an “unusual and eccentric photo book”. It made quite the impression on me and is something I find myself remembering several times a year at least. And now it will come to your mind several times a year at least too, because what ha

Jan 13, 2017
2 min

Why Discussion and Reasoning Have Failed

Want to know why communicating with people on the other side has become so difficult? Well, everyone focuses on the outrageous things Rush Limbaugh says, but if you listen to his show, you can see that underneath all the nonsense, what he’s doing is teaching people the dirty tricks of rhetoric and debate. He’s been showing his listeners how to trip people up with manufactured double binds, sentences crafted to allow you to believe something other than what is being communicat

Jan 12, 2017
6 min

Stop Arguments Online Like a Mom

My husband is completely convinced that there are Jews somewhere in my Polish lineage. Because three of my great joys in life are being thrifty, complaining and arguing. I tell him that this must mean that there are Jews somewhere in his Irish lineage. The Irish filtered out the cheap part, I explained. But he thinks it must come from somewhere around Ethiopia on his African side. Which would explain his reluctance to embrace the fine stereo-typically Jewish trait of thrift,

Jan 12, 2017
8 min

Why Donald Trump Talks the Way He Does – and Why It Works

Back in college, I made some halfway decent money selling high end knives in people’s homes. One of the perks of the job was that the company provided us with some pretty high quality training in sales, time management, motivation and the like. The managers were big fans of people like Tony Robbins, Dale Carnegie and Steven Covey and took turns giving talks sharing what they were learning from them with us. While the company’s business model was actually kind of bullshit, the

Jan 11, 2017
3 min

About Trump and That Disabled Reporter

So, odds are good that you’ve heard about actress Meryl Streep’s speech the other night where she said politically charged things like “disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” OK, that’s not quite a fair depiction of the matter. Her speech actually did constitute an attack on Donald Trump. I didn’t watch the it, but I heard about it in real time from friends on Facebook who felt like she was

Jan 11, 2017
1 min

Snowy Day Play

I love videos of animals playing. This one from the Oregon Zoo showing animals in the snow is particularly cute. Isn’t it weird how we’ve been indoctrinated to see animals as unthinking creatures, devoid of relationships and driven only by the instinct to eat and reproduce? Why do we even think that’s the sort of world God would create? Silly. https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Foregonzoo%2Fvideos%2F10154074646286109%2F&show_text=0

Jan 11, 2017
5 min

It’s a Disaster but Everything’s Perfect. I Guess

So, two weeks ago today I fell on an icy driveway and broke my ankle. It was classic; my foot started to slip on the ice, hit dry gravel and stopped. I continued my fall, my foot did not. Just like in every other broken ankle story you’ve ever been told, I heard the crunch of breaking bones, screamed and went into shock. There was no safe way to move me and both my oldest son and my husband have their own issues with balance/stability, so an icy pile-up nightmare was a real d

Dec 24, 2016
3 min

Santa and Grief

A mere week after we held a small burial for Susan, it was Christmas. We attended Christmas Eve children’s mass as usual. After service, several people came to offer condolences to my mother. I was sticking pretty close to her side those days and although I don’t remember anything that was said, I do remember my mom shedding tears while talking with people. We went home in a pretty somber mood. Later that evening my mother and a couple of us sibling were in the kitchen prepar

Dec 23, 2016
5 min

Jesus Saved Our Christmas Dinner

We have a seating problem in our home. Well, two of them actually. The first is that our chairs don’t match and the folding chairs have all lost their stuffing. It’s not very Martha Stewart-ish. Or comfortable. The second is that I have 3 girls under the age of 8. Who all have very strong opinions about where they ought to sit at dinner. And those opinions change nightly. (Yes, yes, I know – each person should have their own seat that they sit in every night. Please, feel fre

Dec 22, 2016
1 min

The Christmas Bird

Instead of doing my Christmas shopping a couple of years ago, I recorded this. It’s perfect for sharing with the kids, if they are the sort who will listen to a recorded story. Grab a cuppa whatever suits you best and listen to the dulcet sound of my voice sharing a heartwarming Christmas story about a farmer, a bird and a little boy. It will be the best 11 minutes of your day. 🙂 For those of you receiving this via email, here’s the link to the recording on soundcloud. Pass

Dec 20, 2016
2 min

Don’t Worry; I Have Found Our Escape Plan

So, all this stuff about Donald Trump and the danger of our situation is scary as hell. But don’t worry – I was reading through conspiracy theories on the internet a while back, and it turns out that rescue is on it’s way. The aliens have it worked out. Among the many things I learned in my foray into the world of ancient alien conspiracies are the following (and no I didn’t make any of this up – these are real things that people believe): Jesus is currently incarnate and wor

Dec 20, 2016
3 min

The Electoral College

One of my working assumptions about life is that only that which can be redeemed is allowed. So anything that happens carries possibilities. Because if it’s happening, it can be redeemed. Now, whether any of that is factually true or not isn’t really here nor there. Even if it’s just a mental construct, it’s served me well through some really crazy shit. Because I assume that everything is moving towards being redeemed, when life throws me a doozy that I wouldn’t choose if yo

Dec 19, 2016
1 min

Let’s Get Something Straight

Praying for someone and being critical of them are not mutually exclusive things. Neither are loving someone and calling out their wrong doing. And, I know this is hard to believe, but speaking out against evil is not the same thing as sowing fear. Right wing Christians understand all these things when they’re targeting the weak, the vulnerable and the oppressed, but seem to lose site of them entirely when it comes to the mighty and powerful. If one more person tells me that

Dec 14, 2016
2 min

The Empath and The Narcissist

Empaths are people who tend to feel and absorb other people’s emotions. Narcissists are people whose only concern is for themselves. When empaths and narcissists come together, as they tend to do, the results are typically quite ugly with the narcissist acting like a parasite feeding off the empath’s emotional acuity and good intentions. The reason that empaths and narcissists seem to be attracted to each other are usually attributed to a combination of the empath’s instincti

Dec 12, 2016
2 min

“Trump Says He’s Going To Bring Steel Back . . .”

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an acquaintance who told me that work at his job was so slow that his hours had been cut and he was afraid that by Christmas they would be closing the shop altogether. He’s a machinist, which is one of those jobs which is usually in high demand; I know just a couple of years ago local shops were recruiting kids right out of high school for training. So I asked him about that but he just shook his head and said that it’s changed. Then, to my su

Dec 11, 2016
1 min

Pay Now or Later

Everything has a price. It’s a rule of the universe. The problem we have is that love demands payment, up front and in full at the most inconvenient times. But once the price of love is paid, everything else comes easy. Fear, anger and cruelty, on the other hand work like a massive balloon payment that start off easy and then suck us dry before taking away what we wanted to begin with. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #howtheuniverseworks #life #lov