When You Wish Upon a Star

Hey. How’s it going out there for y’all?

I hope all y’all are doing well, and that this year has been going better for you than the last couple of years have. I don’t know about you, but things appear to be returning to some sense of normalcy for me. And the pandemic has disrupted my life less than pretty much anyone else I know.

I am blissfully unaware of almost everything going on the world, but even in the severely limited news items I follow, the Coronavirus doesn’t appear to be front page news anymore. I don’t know if any of the people I know that still work in Healthcare would agree with that assessment, but I rarely talk to any of them. Now that I think about it, there are maybe seven or eight people that I converse with on a regular basis, and four of them live here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa most of the time.

I have become a person that mostly exists in other people’s memories.

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When You Wish Upon a Star is a song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Walt Disney’s 1940 animated adaptation of Pinocchio. The original version was sung by Cliff Edwards in the character of Jiminy Cricket.

The Library Of Congress deemed Edwards’s recording of the song “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and inducted it into the National Recording Registry in 2009. The American Film Institute ranked the song seventh in their 100 Greatest Songs in Film History.

When You Wish Upon a Star has become an icon of The Walt Disney Company. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Disney used the song in the opening sequences of all the editions of its television series. All of the ships of the Disney Cruise Line use the first seven notes of the song’s melody as their horn signals.

Personally, I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever written, and listening to it will bring tears to my eyes. The song is pure magic.

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I can’t remember when I started writing this installment of my blog, or how many times I’ve deleted everything and started anew. It’s been a couple of months, at least. For a guy that doesn’t have much of an idea of what he’s going to write about, I appear to be pretty goddamn picky about what I actually post. I figure if I’m bored by my writing, no one else is going to get excited about it either…

I would like to give some props to Jane Castleman. She’s one of the many people I know that I rarely talk to, and she lives only a couple of miles from us. My lovely supermodel wife and I had dinner with Jane and her husband Al back in January.

That’s one of the reasons I think life might be getting back to normal. This year has seemingly flown by compared to the last two years, and they seemed to go on for, like, ten years or something.

Anyway, at the end of dinner I gave Jane a hug and she whispered this in my ear, “Keep writing.”

Jane is one of the few persons that I’m not related to in any fashion that regularly reads my blog. My wife reads everything I write, but only because I’m married to her. Jane almost always leaves a comment for me, and I have loved every one of them. For that reason, and a good many others, I love Jane.

I didn’t know then that it would take me this long for my scattered thoughts to congeal enough into something I felt writing about. But Jane is the main reason I’m even attempting to write now.

Thank you, Jane! You are a sweetheart.

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If you’ve ever read my blog before, you know that I lead an incredibly boring and bucolic life. If this is your first visit here, prepare to be underwhelmed.

If you’re thinking I’m bored because I don’t have anything to do, you would be wrong. We have something like unto a dozen gardens here at the resort, and I am the primary caregiver for most of them. During the Dry Season, which we are in the very peak of dryness right now, the gardens need to be watered on an almost daily basis.

It takes hours to water them all.

Granted, watering a garden isn’t something that most people would describe as their favorite thing to do. I’m not sure even I could say that, and I mostly enjoy watering my plants. It gives me a lots of time to ponder stuff deeply, and I’d probably have to say that is my favorite thing to do.

Deep thinking isn’t something most guys appear to be capable of doing, mostly because guys are the least complex organisms on Earth. And most guys that think they’re complex are not. They’re just confused — probably because almost everything going on around them is complex and they have no idea how process most of it.

A truly complex guy is almost as rare as a unicorn.

We don’t really look like this, eh

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Yo, dude. Have you ever considered the possibility that you’re not complex. Maybe you’re just confused, too.

I will freely admit that I am confused about a great many things. But I am not the only person I know that thinks I’m complex. My wife says I’m considerably more complex than she is, and she’s the most complex person I know. I’m confident both of her daughters would corroborate that statement. They’ve both lived with us, and I doubt either one of them knew what the fuck to think about me at that time.

If you need additional information about my alleged complexity, I can provide you with a list of references upon request.

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When I’m not hanging out in the gardens, I still play golf badly several times a week. I usually play with our roommate, Todd. I used to golf with Todd and Phyllis, but Phyllis has more or less given up golf. The way I’ve been playing lately has reached a new low, and I didn’t think I could get any worse. I’ve thought about giving up on golf, too. But I don’t want to spend that much time in the gardens.

I’ve often heard people say that golf is mental game. That would certainly go a long way to explaining why I suck at golf. My mind rarely focuses specifically on golf.

I enjoy playing golf, even if I can’t do it well most of the time. It’s incredibly satisfying to smack the living shit out of a golf ball and watch it soar through the air like a missile, then land in the middle of the fairway. Or slip your golf ball cleverly through a group of trees. Or sink a really long putt. There’s nothing else like it. Those are the shots that keep you coming back when you suck at golf as much as I do.

Golf is also an easy way for me to meet to people that I can add to the long list of people I know that I will rarely speak to. I enjoy getting to know people on a superficial basis. It’s a helluvalot easier to like someone when you don’t know much of anything about them. Well, it is for me.

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So. What are these incredibly deep and complex thoughts that so completely occupy your mind?

Mostly, I think about God. And the Truth — whatever that is. You know, stuff like that.

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I’ve written a lots of stuff about God in my blog. You could look them up in the archives if you don’t have anything else to do. I’ve probably written a lots of stuff about Truth, too. I don’t think I’ve ever been very specific about it because Truth is something that doesn’t appear to have any consistency to it if you’re not talking about science or mathematics.

Those truths are seemingly absolute. All the time. Well, except in the quantum universe, where pretty much anything appears to be possible. Every other truth appears to be nothing more than a matter of opinion. Don’t agree with me? If you believe something to be true, isn’t that the truth to you?

Okay. I see where you’re going with this, but what if I change my mind about what I believe?

Then whatever you have decided to now be true still remains the truth to you, does it not?

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Probably the one thing that mystified me most about God was the fact that if there was one person, or entity, or whatever you want to describe God as being — He has to know what the real truth is. There had to be a Ground Zero for the Truth at some point in time, even if no one knows what the hell it is anymore. What happened to the Truth, and how could our All-Knowing, All-powerful God allow something as vital as the Truth fall off the fucking radar?

How could there be so many differing opinions on just who and what God is, and what He really wants from us. Where did all of these religions come from, and why, oh why would He allow something that might lead millions of His children to wander down these dusty roads to perdition? Are we not the masterpiece of all His creation?

How do we know if we’re being saved, or if we’ve been pranked?? Is one religion really more better gooder than any other religion? Is there One, True religion? If so, which one is it? How does one determine a religious truth when such truths can essentially be anything you want them to be? What the fuck!

Why???

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In nursing school we had to take a class entitled Anatomy & Physiology. We learned everything that was known at that time about the human body, and how every part of it functioned because as nurses we would be caring for people whose bodies, or parts of their bodies, no longer properly did its job, or jobs.

I’m pretty sure I learned a lots of really important stuff that I’ve probably forgotten about now that I’m no longer a working nurse. But there are two things that jumped out at me when I was a student, and I will never forget them. The first was: form always follows function. And the second was the All or None Law.

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Form always follows function. Every part of your body has a shape that directly corresponds to what it does. I took that one step beyond: We are created in the image of God, according to the Bible. If that is our form, then what, exactly, is our function supposed to be? Yeah, I pondered over that sucker for decades, and some of the answers I’ve received to that question still make me chuckle.

By the way, you should never ask a manic person that question…

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The All or None Law is a principle that states the strength of a response of a nerve cell or muscle fiber is not dependent upon the strength of the stimulus. If a stimulus is above a certain threshold, a nerve or muscle fiber will always react to that stimulus. Essentially, there will either be a full response or there will be no response at all for an individual neuron or muscle fiber.

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I’ve tried applying the All or None Law to a lots of things outside the realm of human physiology, like, you know, religion. Based on that principle, either all of the religions on this planet are true. Or none of them are. I found both of those speculations to be morally and ethically abhorrent.

It’s probably not a good idea for anyone to try this line of thinking without professional supervision. Even then, the results aren’t likely to get any better than mine. And I like to think I’m extremely good at abstract thinking…

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I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was asking questions that could never be answered by me, myself, and I. Nor did it seem that any of the religious “authorities” I questioned knew the answers to those questions either. I label them as authorities because that’s what they thought they were.

They went to school and studied the Bible, and holy scriptures, and stuff. So what could I possibly know about God that they did not? It’s like unto seeing your doctor and telling him you’ve looked up all of your symptoms on WebMD, and this is the treatment he should give you.

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You might wonder why I spend such an inordinate amount of time contemplating questions that don’t appear to have an answer, like I was some kind of Zen mystic or something. My lovely supermodel wife certainly does. I’m sure I’ve asked myself that same question more than once. And for me, the answer is simple: Spirituality.

Spirituality is a vital aspect of health and well-being, even if you don’t believe in God. That might not appear to make any sense, but even atheists believe in Something. Nature. The Universe. Call it what you will. Almost everyone on this planet believes in a God, or a lots of gods, or something that is externally greater than themselves. As far as I’m concerned, that constitutes spirituality.

In nursing school, we were taught about this spiritual component in terms of the Health-Illness Continuum. You can Google that up if you want more information on it.

I don’t think most people consider Nursing to be a spiritual profession, but every nurse I’ve ever known has prayed to God to save someone in their care. Or to save them from killing someone that the world would be much better without. Nurses know they are going to need all the help they can get from God because so many things can go wrong in healthcare, and very few of them are under our direct control.

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Many people equate spirituality with religion. Spiritual people go to church, don’t they? I mean, like, every Sunday — not just Christmas and Easter. I consider myself to be a spiritual person. and I rarely go to church anymore. Mostly because I think organized religion is the most successful scam operation ever invented by man. I could seriously elaborate on this topic for hours, but that’s the last thing I want to do because that would entail one helluvalot of typing, and I type about as well as I golf.

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I am not a great writer. I’m a great re-writer. I edit everything I write about 10,000 times. Sometimes even I don’t know what I was originally trying to say.

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Religion isn’t just the opium of the masses, as Karl Marx pointed out a couple of hundred years ago. It’s much, much worse that that. Organized religion has created far more problems than it has ever solved, and it has harmed just as many people as it has ever helped. Blatant hypocrisy and sex scandals aside, there’s this undisputable fact: Organized religion is Big Business.

The Roman Catholic Church is a corporation that has a net worth greater than General Motors, and possibly every other automobile manufacturer worldwide, combined. The Church isn’t just rich, it’s filthy fucking rich. Not bad for a bunch of dudes that took an oath of poverty…

And don’t get me started on television evangelists. I seriously hate every one of those motherfuckers.

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If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, take heart. I’m almost done.

I went to church on last year on Christmas Eve. My wife and son-in-law wanted to go to church, and even if I don’t think organized religion serves much of a higher purpose to me, it meant a lot to them. So to church we went. Gwen, John, Lea and myself.

It was a candle-light service, which was very soothing, even to me. The pastor of this church gave a little sermon about the birth of Jesus — the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear at a Christmas Eve service. I would have probably fallen asleep if it weren’t for the lit candle I was holding in my hand. And then the pastor said this, “Redemption always requires blood.”

It was a seemingly random sentence that popped up out of nowhere. I’m not sure he was even aware he said it because he didn’t elaborate on it. I’m not sure anyone else inside the church even heard what he had said.

But I could not forget it.

I thought about what he said for hours. When we went to bed that night, I was still thinking about it. And because I couldn’t stop thinking about that one random line, I decided to do something I had never done before.

I opened my heart, I opened my mind, I opened every cell in my body — I opened my very soul to God, to the Universe, and Everything.

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I’ve prayed to God a million times or more in my lifetime. I’ve prayed for a lots of things. Mostly things, I think. I’ve prayed for other things, too. Strength in times of trouble. Wisdom. Patience. That’s something you should never pray for because I can guarantee you will not like the way God will answer that prayer.

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I didn’t pray that night. I simply opened my soul to God and asked Him one question.

What is the truth?

I know I’ve asked Him that question countless times, expecting to receive some sort of response, only to hear the disappointing sounds of silence echo inside my head.

But on that night, Christmas Eve, 2021, exactly at midnight — God, the Universe, and Everything — answered me.