Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums: Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums -> Nile_Shaman's Fireflies

Since my previous entry, over a year ago, a lot has changed in my life. Maybe the details will arise in later entries, when they'd have some importance, but what I am focussed on now is my new career, which is working at an undisclosed mental health facility, with the mentally challenged. It has been the most remarkable experience of my life, thus far.

I was helping out in the day program, and for those able to relate enough to participate, the art project for the day was to make those little sand bottles. You know, the kind where you pour in colored layers of sand and then shift it to create designs, then fill the bottle up to the top and seal it to help keep the design stable.

Colors and something they can do themselves is a big hit, and being told these were Christmas presents they could give or send to their family excited the few doing it wildly.

M was one, and he was simply aglow and in his occasional sounds and constant smiles, was "Mom". He loves his Mother hugely, she is about all he talks about, when he talks. For whatever reason, she never comes. He hasn't seen her in years. He stayed focussed on the sand bottle he was making for an extraordinary length of time for him, and when he had it done, he carried it around with him and regaled everyone, even the other patients, that it was for his "Mom".

I am still in training for certification, and when the day school was done for the day, and those still at home were taken back to family, and the rest taken back to thier group homes, I was sent to finish out my hours for the day to the home where M lives with five other male patients. Like M, they are capable enough to greatly thrive in a small "family" of six non-standard guys and two or three constants around to actually run things, cook, clean, wash the clothes, take them where they need to be and bathe and get them dressed or to bed.

The goal is to always engage them, when possible, in doing and interacting and learning normal things to run a home and a life. I was the new face there for the afternoon, but known from the day school, so he latched onto me happily and we played games and went and did the shopping, while the two regular caregivers, two wonderful black men, ran things and got supper cooked.

The meal was awesome, and when it was over, I felt it was fair if I did the dishes since the guys had cooked, so I started on that and since I could not be rid of M, asked him to do things to help with the effort he could understand. He brought me every loose plate and cup in the house, dirty or not in his excitement and eagerness to do things with me, and participate. We washed them and loaded them in the dishwasher, and chased each other with the brooms to sweep up and mop up. M was having a wonderful evening, and so was I, truth be told.

I went outside to the break area to have a smoke, while the other two were there to supervise things and M followed me out and stood there with one hand tucked into my arm as I smoked, in the cold night, pleased when I pointed to the moon and the stars, and happy to point to them and smile over something we could share. Soon, I put the cigarette out and we went back inside, giggling, and played a game on the diningroom table while the guys started to work on getting the baths done and pj's for all and the meds out and taken and documented.

Soon, it was time to go, and M knows about people leaving regularly. My shift was done, as I was a fill-in though the regular staff remained. I got ready to go and he vanished for a minute and then scurried out to me at the door as I said my good-byes, with that sand bottle in his hands.

He pushed it at me, the bottle he'd let no one else touch all day except to admire.

"Yes, that is really pretty," I enthused for the thousandth time and smiled. "That is what you made for your Mother, and she will like it."

He didn't smile this time, though. He pushed it at me and then tried to place it in my hand.

"That is for your Mama, M," I said patiently.

He shook his head almost violently and shoved it at me again and then looked me in the eye and said, "Mom."

I understood, and it made me want to weep, but we cannot take their things and it isn't true or right, and so I distracted him with happy chatter about seeing him at the school again in a few days and escaped the house. I didn't want him to feel his gift was rejected, and mercifully, their memories are brief in most cases. He kept the bottle.

But, my memory is not brief, and so I carried his little sand bottle out in my heart and will keep it there, safely and cherished.
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If you know, or have a mentally impaired person in your circles or family, remember them, please. Especially at the holidays, when we buy gifts and cards ourselves so they do not feel forgotten. It doesn't take much at all of yourself to mean everything to one of these beautiful people. Buy a box of bright cards and donate them to a local mental health facility for the staff to make out and send to those who receive none, if you don't know anyone personally. You have no idea how much a little moment of kindness can be expanded into meaning.

No idea at all.

So, I have a new purpose for my blog here, which is to tell you their stories and days and what they have given to me and my thoughts as I learn my new career among the "******ed" adults in my care. I had no clue, either, and now that I do, I need to share it.

Toys, simple games that makes sounds and lack small bits to be swallowed, boxes of Holiday cards or decorations can be well used by your local mental health facilities and programs for their patients.

Please, remember us.

NS

The past year has not been one of my favorites. It has been rough, a period I consider to be one of my longest running "Dark Nights of The Soul", actually. Truth is, being me was rugged a bit before that, but it really got dark the past year and I have been through many changes as a result, and have more ahead of me, too.

There were many times I was quite angry, and seriously wondered how this or that could happen to me, if God was so loving as I have always believed. I think we all do that. We tend to take credit when things go well, and blame God when they don't.

I drove down to Florida to see my parents last week for a couple days and on the long drive back was thinking about that, and the odd year behind me, and pondering a lot of things. Seemingly from nowhere, it came to me that maybe I was seeing it wrong.

If I really believe that God is about love towards me, as one of His children, then what I might do better is to look at events with that in mind and see how they shape up, then. If He loves, then the things that have happened were the best potentials out of choices and consequences of my decisisons and actions prior.

Some of my heavy heart lifted and I started playing with that idea as I reconsidered matters, and it was funny how my perspective shifted to notice the good things which I have today and didn't have before. The things I know now. The things I know now were lies or wrong and friends who proved unworthy of my affection. Painful, yes. But, was it bad to know it and remove them from my life? Was it bad to leave a job I hated under it all? Was it bad to sell a house I'd come to hate? Was it bad to now live in a home I love and always hoped to have someday? Is it bad to look forward in my new town to hope to make better friends and live a more satisfying life?

The world is full of people who have less than I do, of everything. I really was crazy to feel pity for myself and my losses. At the worst of times I had more than easily half the world's population. I still have both my parents alive and in reasonably good health. They will have their 50th wedding anniversary in a couple of months. The same harsh year revealed a couple friends who proved true to the bone to me.

I gained a lot. I didn't lose anything of real substance in the end. Things, belongings, false friends. I can buy more furniture. Two of my beloved dogs died, but they were very old and needed to pass on to be puppies again in the doggie hereafter and free of stiff joints and failing hearing and worse eyesight. I didn't desire to deal with the change of no longer having them here, especially with everything else seemingly going to the h-lls, but they needed the release, and real love doesn't want pain for the beloved.

Real love doesn't want pain for the beloved.

That rather changes how I see everything that has passed before. It gives me a renewed hope for the future as I start fresh. As parents, we sometimes have to hurt our children for their best good. We make them get shots, go to school, do things they don't want to do, punish when they do things we know are not good for them to persist in. We do that because we love them.

I figure I am probably one of God's biggest brats, truth be told, but I am not incorrigible. I can eventually see some sense and behave myself. There is sense and love woven throughout my pain and despair and confusion of the past months. If I doubt it, I have to look around where I am today and acknowledge that it worked out so far and is pretty good today. It always has been basically pretty good for 48 years now. I can get all worked up over an event, but in the bigger picture, that is alot less of a big deal than the many little blessings and smiles and good things which also are sprinkled over the tough times.

I shouldn't be asking, "How can this be if You love me?".

I should be asking, "Help me to see Your love even as I pass through these days."

The consequences of the choices we make, or fail to make, aren't God's fault. The actions of other people and the consequences of those are not God's fault. But, if we keep looking at Him as a Father Who loves, we can get back on our feet faster and walk steadier through the darker valleys and the more quickly reach the sunny side of life again for a break.

All that sitting down and howling and weeping and whining does is prolong the journey and distance left to walk. It drags it out.

I hope I remember this insight, next time.

Back in the early days of the Christian movement, it was a sacred symbol of trust and proof between people to reveal the sign of the fish, called "ichthus", to confirm that each other was a Christian. You could die for it, so it meant a great deal.

Today, it has a very different and more plastic meaning, if one can call it that.

I was reminded of this when I got cut off and nearly wrecked while driving to Florida the other day by an SUV with one of those damn fish things stuck on the back. I cannot recall the color of the vehicle, nor the state the license plate was from, but I remember the fish and my overpowering desire for a harpoon to take it out with.

Why do people advertise their supposed beliefs on their cars, thier t-shirts, their stupid little yellow WWJD bracelets, if they have no intentions of BEING that faith except in church on Sundays? Do they not realize how much bad press they give to Christ by living as bad or worse than the rest of us the rest of the time?

I know, I know, saved by grace and all of that, but you are an embarassment to Him when you act no different from anyone else, and drive like you're in a hurry to get to your reward, and don't care if you hurry me to mine.

This sort of affectation and cutesy is sickening to me. I really loathe it when you are behind a car with the whole family in icky-thus, you know, the two big ones plus a bunch of smaller ones.

We are all human and we all make mistakes, but why draw attention to your God or Faith unnecessarily and in such a bad light?

And nope, I'm not one of those hellspawn, hellbound anti-Christs. I'm not a Pagan either. I'm no friend of the "church" nor am I a friend of "paganism" or any other "ism" or "olic" or "ist".

But, I am a friend of God the best I know how to be, and you and your icky-thus volunteered to get featured in my blog, so live with it and think about how what you do and say reflects on your Good Buddy the next time you think about adding more of that hype trash to your bumper. It's not what is on your car, but in your heart and how it shows in your behavior.

Thankfully, God kept me from dying. You sure didn't, and you turned around and did it to another guy to keep making another few feet towards your own destination.

Nice. Real nice. Jesus wouldn't even have had a CAR if He lived now as he did then.

*grumbles*
NS

I cashed out my retirement account and bought a farm in nowheresville bayou in rural Louisiana last Fall, and am revelling in it past expressing to you. Of many miracles to me, one of the most profound to me personally are the fireflies.

The last time I saw any, I was about five years old and walking through a twilight field with my hand in my Grandfather's hand, and in the lowering darkness were these magical lights that awed me. I asked him if they were fairies, in tones of wonder.

Being a good Pentecostal, he scolded me that no, there were no fairies, not at all, don't be stupid. Those were just insects called fireflies.

I subsided, but watched them as we continued on across the field. I watched them and marvelled anyway, fairies or not. They were magic. Just like the dragonflies that followed me about during the days when I played by myself in the yard. Friends of mine. Things to marvel over.

It has been over forty years and I have never seen fireflies since then. I figured they were more uncounted victims to pesticides and city lights and our great advancement, and "civilization". Like the fairies, gone. Don't be stupid.

So, imagine my amazement to walk into the farmhouse from grabbing some items from the clothesline as night fell, to lift my eyes in early May and see... was that....

Oh, my God! I have fireflies here!

I was suddenly five years old again, dried wash forgotten, things to do forgotten, as I stood and watched the fairy lights flickering on and off in their species distinct patterns, all across the (admittedly) overgrown lawn and some in the woods beyond.

It has been a troubled period in life for me, these changes I am passing through, and the fireflies brought a message to me that evening, of hope. Tiny lights amid overwhelming dark, reminding that the darker it is, the more easy it is to see the tiniest of lights. The precious, priceless tiny things we overlook in all the good times of bright and burning sun. The reminder that in the worst of times, even the smallest of us matters immeasureably if we carry any light within us at all.

Fairy lights. Fireflies.

I won't be cutting my lawns here until after May, their peak breeding season, to make sure they have every chance to prosper and increase here. No self respecting shaman could.

I was lurking in a chat room the other night and was moved to tears as I read the elevated and wonderful conversation about "good" and "evil" being relative terms. They said, there is no good or evil, as it depends on your point of view. What is good for one may be evil to another person, so it is all relative and there IS no Absolute Good (God) and no Absolute Evil (d'Evil).

The tears came because I was hearing a bunch of theorists, sitting on their high tech computers with time and leisure enough to be typing to other people they barely know, between looking over to watch television or go to the kitchen for another pack of smokes or bag of chips.

The tears came because I was seeing overlaid to the words on the screen, like a movie, a Mother in Africa trying wearily to brush flies from her dying baby's face as it cried weakly. I saw innocents at the marketplace with thier children being blown apart by hidden explosives. I saw a frightened and agonized young woman facing her killer as he came to end her brief life for no reason at all but his own sick will. I saw a young couple being brutalized, raped, tortured and butchered by a pack of hate-filled animals.

I suppose it does depend on your perspective as to what is good or evil, but there is nothing relative about it, and the world proves there is Good and Evil and nothing at all subjective about it when it comes knocking on your door and blows your own life to the hells you don't believe in.

I don't blame my own wickedness on the Devil. It's my own fault. It is the fault of all of us. In our arrogance and false sense of security, we are SO blind and so hung up on our delusions of elevated thought and superiority.

Shut off the electric and give it three days and you'll wonder if we even have a civilization as people start going nutty. I've seen it after hurricanes, and been thankful the power would soon be returned. If not, and the darkness stayed dark at night, and the store shelves stayed empty, we'd see such naked evil oozing out in our own towns and cities there would be no going back afterwards from those visions seared into our minds and enlightening us in a more accurate way.

I felt the tears run, because we are so pathetic in our fairy tale realities and can't seem to close the book and set it aside and really smile after enjoying a brief dose of fantasy. We're junkies for it, and for denial of the reality beyond the borders of our lives, where unthinkable things await to pounce. We undermine our own strengths by giving them away to the enemy through rationalization and "being fair", when they have no such plans for us.

God knows, I am no warmonger. I want nothing more in life than to curl up in a safe place and escape reality here with a good book and a box of excellent candy. But, my upbringing travelling all over the world, my own stint in the military, and time as a street cop in the USA will never let that be so for very long. I do not have a "us versus them" view, but a global one, and the overwhelming inequities and evil and deliberate anguish inflicted, the naked greed is as a tsunami gathering force and height in a wave over the world and about to crash down as CONSEQUENCES.

It cares not a damn about your ideologies or opinions. It cares nothing about your God or your devils. It cares nothing if that is your baby or your pets, it just will sweep us all into whatever actually does lie Beyond.

And when dawn rises on the day after, and a few survivors crawl out in shock to look about the ruins, I doubt they will have any of the ideas we are so entertained and soothed by today.

But, they'd probably share my tears.

You know I used to think of big religion and government, even the school systems as being Mind Police, and I really resented it and felt we should have the right to peacefully assemble and talk or whatever else we want to do, short of insurrection and mayhem.

Then, I grew up.

We all do it. Get a Pagan e-list going and some Christian has to get on it and try to save everyone. Have a Christian e-list going, and some Pagan (or pretender) has to get on it and spout off garbage to disrupt the harmony there.

Go to a paranormal Forum like UM, and even with a dozen separate places to talk whatever turns you on, someone has to come in and mock or start a fight with someone there who is enjoying the conversation.

Some call them Trolls. I call them rude, juvenile, self centered little sh-ts. "Troll" is too glamorous a term. They're just RUDE.

It is verbal sociopathy, not anarchy or some form of rebellion. It isn't a rebellion if you do the same thing as people you don't like do to you.

The theory is that people who do this, do it because they have problems in their own real world life and lash out with this behavior online. I don't find that surprising nor a reason for sympathy. No wonder they have problems in the real world if they cannot function in an artificial space where your looks, your handicaps or lack of them, your money, nothing else, matters but what you type and how you come across over time.

In fact, your character is what shows online, your personality, if you are being honestly yourself, and so I'm back to my original assessment of Trolls.

They're rude. They have nothing to say and so they mock everyone else who has something to say, however stupid to their point of view. They are as abusive as the people they imagine themselves abused by.

Which says more about them than who they want to upset and offend, some of whom might have proven to be really good friends for them to discover, different or not.

Friends don't have to agree on everything. The best ones almost never do, but they can discuss and still like you anyway.

Trolls, though, are like ticks and serve no purpose but to annoy and spread incivility among people who already are struggling against that in the real world and come online for a space and time of some sense of community and a couple of like minded people to talk about almost anything with in peace.

Pathetic, maybe, but not as pathetic as those who so value themselves there is no room in their world for anyone who doesn't add to their own sense of being something clever and unique.

Too bad they don't realize we all are that already and when they get out into the real world, there are enough real issues to fight that their days of trolldom were as nothing, now, or then.

There have been several forum threads recently on the topic of demons and demonology. Are they real? Are they a made up tool to scare people by the Christians? Are they no more than a mental health problem? Are they just another convenient excuse for people to blame what they do on?

I think it matters less what camp of opinion a person is in after reading through them all, than that the points of view are out there and available to read and think about.

You know, I don't believe in Sasquatch, but if the day comes I find a large hairy gorilla-like thing chasing me in my woods, and gets shot dead for it's trouble, I might. If the carcass doesn't prove to be my ex after all, nor a gorilla in the wild somehow, I'll know he may be worth a lot of money to me. When I get paid, hey, I'll believe . I'll even post a blog entry about my rewarding experience with Sasquatch....

Demons, spirits, UFOs, unseen things.... by their very nature they are not commonly known about, and they won't be, maybe, ever. It is the nature of the thing, and why we even talk about it. I don't know you'd get threads hitting the hundreds of replies on something we all knew existed.

I have seen things in the sky, flying, which I didn't know what it was. Technically, that would be a UFO. An Unidentified Flying Object. But, I don't believe the whole array of aliens and invasions and abductions. I stay entirely away from debates of that and would never say anything to someone claiming they'd been taken up to a spaceship. If I couldn't avoid it, I'd hear them out and maybe ask a question or two, and then walk on. My opinion only matters to me. But, if I found something hairless and gray with huge eyes grabbing for me, I'd know what it might be, and would change my mind. One genuine sighting, and it won't matter what I thought before. I'll believe.

It is the same with demons or ghosts. I never believed in ghosts a bit until I worked in one old airport and saw and heard things with no other explanation possible. I know I am not a fanciful and delusional mental case. But... other people don't know that and so I don't talk about it much. It doesn't matter what other people believe. I know what I saw and heard. I don't *think* it, I KNOW what I saw.

I also know demons are real and I know there is little end to how nefarious and clever they can be. They are smarter than we are, and no surprise most don't believe in them. That works in their favor. I know what I have seen, experienced. Like UFOs, if you ever do, too, you'll believe. Doesn't matter what you thought before.

So, why argue about it?

What I don't understand about it all is why some people get so worked up about needing to convince us of their point of view. I don't really care if you agree with me, in fact it is nice if someone doesn't and is mature enough to discuss a topic. I like a good discussion. I find intelligence quite attractive in people. I am thrilled to run into someone who has actually thought through their opinion and has some research to back it up. Critical thinking is a dying art in this country.

There is enough visible evil in this realm to keep us all occupied, and we don't bother with it. I remember when I saw the Twin Towers come down impossibly on 9/11, I watched it in disbelief and the thought crossed my mind that it looked like a perfect demolition. Not once, but twice, then thrice when the 7th Tower also dropped perfectly for a demolition. Professionals would be hard pressed to devise a drop that good. What were the odds? Once? Extreme. three times, including one building that didn't even get run into? Well beyond the odds of hitting the lotto.

The owner made 7 billion off the tragedy, I think it was. Did not have to pay for the cleanup of the poisons released, or the hundreds suffering now from cancers and lung disease from exposure. People are donating money for the memorial and rebuild.... how convenient. [I lost my roof in the hurricanes and could not even get a tarp from FEMA, nor help when my insurance company filed bankcruptcy to protect themselves financially. Nobody worried about protecting me or my finances]. When I saw the tape which further proved this version of events to me, I sat back and realized that demons are indeed proven to be alive and well, and some of them, some of the worst of them, are humans it would seem. The magnitude of a conspiracy this huge, the uncaring about the thousands who died for profit of a few, is overwhelming and goes all the way up.

Let us hope and pray there IS a God, because I don't think we're big enough on our own to take care of the evil we ourselves are capable of right here. Sometimes, demons just seem like overkill, and ghosts are comic relief.

NS

There is nothing singularly special about me, when considered in the mix of humanity, but I am all I have and so I am important to me. For some years I have been posting about many things online, but never created a blog for myself until now. This is mostly all about me, and my thoughts, and my points of view as I am going through some challenging times in life. My personal diary, if you will, freed of any concern about others being able to peer at the pages.

I read over the forums here at UM and it seems to me that most people have an agenda to project themselves and their points of view and feel reassurance when they perceive agreement. I find agreement a pleasant thing myself, but misleading if sought outside myself. My agenda is to know myself first and from there to interpret other outside things, so a blog is more useful to that end, I think, and yet also a step outside myself and my secret places. I am not interested in arguing with people or changing their minds or debating, so this is my space, to think aloud.

Not a bad thing. A useful experiment.

Come along, if you like.

NS