Letting Go Of Old Lies

In 2004 or 2005, I was going to a church that was becoming a cult. In a prayer line one day, this lady who I had gone to Sunday school with and who allegedly had a very strong "prophetic" ability told me something about my needing to be able to handle I don't remember what by myself, because there would be times when there will be no one there to help me. I had issues already with trying to do it all myself and carry the world on my head. I had been taught that the way you can tell if something like that is right is if it confirms something you already have inside you. That is not a good way to discern spirits! There were many other things she said, things she prayed for and asked for me that I had not asked her to pray for but that I really did want and need. She prayed for my family, she prayed for my dreams that I had written in a journal and never shared with a soul. There is indeed no way she could have known all that about me, we didn't hang out and I never told her or anyone who could have told her, I don't think. That doesn't mean it was God. I believe now that it was the devil. Absolutely, positively sure it was the devil.

Hit my head and had no one to take me to the doctor for hours and hours. Only had one friend locally, and 2 local acquaintances who were all either working or in bed. Isolating too much.

That was a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately. As I have gotten healthier, my circle of friends is getting smaller and smaller. Unhealthy relationships have been ended, but new ones have not started. I've been increasingly self-sufficient and even more reluctant to reach out than before. Many times I know I have consciously chosen not to reach out and had that "prophecy" in my mind as the reason or justification or whatever. Not anymore.

After what I went through this morning in the depth of winter with my right foot out of commission and my head bleeding like a stuck pig and having to wear shorts in the freezing cold because I can't pull my pants over the boot, and finding the truck door froze shut and dropping the phone in the snow and all being in pain from the cold on my hands and the bump on my head and the recent surgery on my foot, crawling down the steps with bare knees on snow and ice, unable to clear the wind shield myself so I had to let it warm up until the ice thawed, man I tell you I am done. I am done feeling like I need to be stronger and learn to do it on my own in case I gotta, because sometimes it results in my having to do it alone when maybe I wouldn't otherwise. This kind of crap is not God's will for anyone's life and it doesn't make you stronger necessarily, it breaks you down over time. I have been asking myself lately when it is going to be enough, when I will have "done it myself" enough already. Today was it. Today, I got pushed over the edge and am so done with trying so often to do everything on my own. I had a feeling I would find that point, to be able to root out and change this pattern, while on medical leave with foot surgery. Apparently my gut feeling was right.

So in spite of the pain and misery of today, I am happy to have gotten a breakthrough out of it, if indeed that is what I have done. I think I have written stuff like  this before, but I did not confront that "prophecy" as a falsehood and tried to "balance" that message and just not take it so far. You can't work a lie into your balance in life, period. As long as you believe it, it will mess you up.

I told God I forgive that lady for that fake prophecy and asked God to forgive her too, and help her break loose of what is using her like that. I also ask God to forgive me, for believing it so long when I realize He has tried to tell me, many times, to let that belief go. Today, through many tears, I did.

What's holding you back? At what point will you be willing to let the lie(s) go?

Stuff to prayerfully think about.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

On Relationships with Patron Saints

I used to be afraid to do the catholic thing of developing relationship of sorts with saints, it sounded creepy and I feared I'd just go nuts thinking I was doing that and really just be getting really weird in my head. Well, it hasn't done me any good to be cooped up and refusing to do that, because I just get a head full of stuff I don't always want there that is not productive. So, doing what verifiable sane people all over the world and through the ages have done, I am, since I'm stuck by myself so much anyway, learning about how people on earth relate to saints. It's very new to me, but what little I have dabbled, so far it's been very good.
A brief testimony of my experience this month already, havingjust started to actually try tand pursue this: I had, I admit, an awful struggle with lust in my head since I've been so cooped up by myself this past week and a half. I've been out of commission with foot surgery since the 13th, and have barely been out since. I have very few friends nearby, as I am pretty much a hermit otherwise anyway. My patron saint, the one I took my confirmation name for, is Teresa of Avila. So, I looked up some patron saint stuff, and I asked her to please pray for me since I know as a Carmelite nun she spent a tremendous amount of time alone. From reading her stuff I know she knew she would have been kind of a hoochie momma instead of a nun were it not for the grace of God, and she was a total flirt when she was "single". She struggled with that a lot for many years of her life even well into her time as a Carmelite, with temptations and thoughts that she didn't feel she should have, and with being a temptress or a flirt when she was around guys a lot. The details are different, but the situation is similar enough so I asked her to pray for me please.

St. Teresa of Avila, a.k.a. Teresa of Jesus

My patron Saint.

I must say, the answer to those prayers came pretty darn fast! It's been a lot better since even a few minutes later, and getting better still. I have gotten enough energy and a regular enough sleep schedule (though not the one I want) to get things done in my room. I looked up how to do laundry by hand and have gotten some done already. Plus dishes and putting away things that haven't got put away. I crawled of course, but knees somehow could take it.I made a to do list for the week, and the weekend and the day, and have really been knocking stuff out. she was a work horse too, like I usually am. So Thank you, Teresa of Jesus, for the prayers that avail so much. Godspeed.

Reflections on Intolerance, 10 Years After Sophie Lancaster's Murder

With the 10-year anniversary of Sophie Lancaster’s murder passing this week, the crime and its motive is drawing attention again from some.

After hearing of the crime, I started shouting from the rooftops about things that, while not exactly violent, were nevertheless extreme and which I had, at that point, pretty much kept my mouth shut about for 5 or 6 years.

Its not as bad as it used to be, but people don’t realize how intense and irrational so many people get over something or someone different, especially appearing different.

This crime shook the entire Goth community around the world, and aparently shook all of England too. The attention unfortunately made it harder for Rob to heal, but it resonated so much and scared so many people, to realise that "lookism" really can get this bad. 

It should work the opposite way, but unfortunately, professing Christians tend to be worse than most. Friends of mine have had objects thrown at them by adults yelling things like, “Mother F****** devils!” or “You’re going to hell!” The people who killed Sophie Lancaster were not professing Christians, which almost seems like an anomoly, actually.  I’ve definitely had my share of crap, not as much having things thrown at me that many times, but quite significantly worse.

Pretty much run away and homeless at 19, some people from a church who really did care about me thought it would be a good idea to put me in a faith-based drug rehab.

I wasn’t on drugs. I had not, and have not, ever taken drugs in my life and I told them so, but I’ve spent a year in a drug rehab anyway. I was told that the people in there were just like me, except I wasn’t on drugs. I got so I actually believed that too, for a long time. It wasn't true at all, Ihad issues, I had run away for a reason, but I wasn't like the girls in there, I was very much the opposite instead. That's what people around me believed though, and I came to agree, so I went.

I was the only goth in the drug rehab the whole time I was there. The top guy in the faith-based drug rehab that knew I had never taken drugs decided, after 9 months, that I wasn’t making enough progress. I don't know what progress would even have looked like, really, I don't remember. So, without even as much training for such things as their counselors had (they did not have actual counselors, they had “biblical counseling” which requires basically no training in psych whatsoever), he decided to take over counseling me himself. He said he knew I really had a heart for God but for some reason I wasn’t progressing well, so he was going to renew my mind for me. Seriously.

So I had to keep a journal and “track my thoughts” throughout the day and let him read it and tell me what to do different, sort of interrogating me like a movie lawyer about stuff. Leaving wasn't really an option as far as I knew, I had nowhere to go. They of course weren't going to help with "re-entry" unless I finished, either.
Long story short, they found a place for me to stay for 2 or 3 months at an A.G. Bible school when I finally finished their “program” (I guess it really did help some people. Drug addicts and career criminals got their lives turned around sometimes by the ferocious “tough love” and rigid control in there, but I sure didn’t. This mess I dealt with wasn't their typical thing though. I was different).

The folks at the bible school gave me a welcome basket and a piece of paper to fill out, just to get to know me better. It asked questions like my favorite food or favorite movie, favorite color, likes and dislikes, pet peeves etc. The only questions I could answer were my name and birthday. I honestly didn’t know myself anymore, at all. I doubted my memories, especially the most awful ones, I didn’t know what I really thought or how I really felt about anything. I had learned that anger was always a sign of a “personal right” that I had not given up to God and that I needed to identify that idea of a personal right and give it up to God and repent if I ever felt angry, and that most everything I liked or was interested in wasn’t really my interest but Satan had told me it was and I had believed him. Black couldn’t possibly be my favorite color, I didn’t really like bats, I didn’t really like . . . anything. I may not really have been abused, I didn’t really…

I truly could not sort out answers to those very simple questions. I realized then what had been done to me. I’d been brainwashed or mind-wiped or something.
I had to believe that the God who made me would be able to put me back together. He can, and He’s still doing it. Of course I have to do my part too.

The song seems very fitting for the topic here, it's just how it is when you must get through something like this. I don't know what happened to the singer to make him feel like this, but he sums it all up quite well.

In that awful place, a totally well-meaning and oblivious ex-priest with a theology degree came and talked to us a few times. He had left the A.G. church and went back to Catholicism, but was married instead of being a priest. What he said was just amazing and inspiring. My saintly maternal grandmother was also Catholic and I had one of her rosaries. I didn’t know how to use it, but it did seem to ground me and make me feel closer to her and to God. I forgot it in the prayer closet one time. Someone threw it away. Everyone knew I had it and several gave me crap for it, but I wouldn’t relinquish it. Somebody did it for me, though. I never forgot. The anti-Catholic prejudice from everyone but maybe two people there made me more drawn to Catholicism than I even was before. It was 12 years before I became Catholic, though.
I got into a cult when I got out and upon realizing it, left again and ultimately ended up working with the “Christian Goth” community in Central IL. Of course I believe you can be a Christian goth, but I’m not real sure anymore about organizing as such. . . After I got out of all affiliations with organizations claiming to be Christian goth organizations or churches or whatever, I came to the Catholic church. I was always told about how controlling they were. LOL! I remember thinking, “They can’t be any worse than I’ve already been through!”

For the most part they are nowhere near as bad. Some other churches I’ve been to like to do laying on of hands for everything, its just over the top, but they wouldn’t touch me. They’d hold their hands toward me and keep at least a few inches of space between me and them, but everyone else got actual contact. In RCIA, when I couldn’t take communion yet, I went down for communion with my arms crossed over my chest, like in a coffin. That’s the code for “I’m not Catholic,” and they won’t give you communion, they will give you a blessing instead. Fr. John drew a cross on my forehead and never recoiled, no matter what I had on. He didn’t seem to think I might spiritually contaminate him if he did that, like the Protestant charismatics and Pentecostals so often did/do to subculture people and to Goths in particular. The first time I did not go to C-stone or Audiofeed festivals to hang out in the goth tent, I went on a pilgrimage with my parish to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield, IL. I was the only goth in the place, I totally stuck out like a sore thumb, but you can’t even tell that in the group picture. I didn’t get any mistreatment either, a few people at the cathedral did very minute double-takes but that was all, I was treated the same as everyone else.

I'm the 6th from the left on the bottom. I don't get the impression of being a square peg in a round hole from this photograph.

I still have problems from the unfortunate experience in the drug rehab I went to for a drug problem I did not have, though it's nowhere near as bad as it once was. I.  can relate somewhat to Rob Maltby’s depression and anxiety, becoming a recluse, and struggling to get on with his life. It’s been a muddy uphill battle for me too for about … well for about 15 plus years at this point. Not without gains, but its one of those things like, the further you go the further you see that you need to go.

I know I can never imagine what its like to lose someone you expect to be your life partner so suddenly, so violently, and then have no privacy due to media attention and not have a decent opportunity to heal. I can’t imagine how difficult this time must be. I definitely pray for him and for others who have endured particularly extreme attacks for being different, and especially for looking different. I pray for tolerance everywhere and especially for the church - the whole church - to come out of the grip of whatever unholy influences drive this kind of behavior. I pray for an end to violence, and an end to intolerance, and an end to foolish stereotypes. I hope any who read this will pray too.

Godspeed.
~Mother Star

Today's Worthwhile News Breaking: Westboro Baptitst Church founder's Daughter Goes Pro LGBT.

I was just talking to an elderly friend about polarization and pride in the church and politics earlier today.

My understanding is, the Westboro Baptist Church founder's daughter is pro LGBT now, because she began to see the evil that they did and the cruelty and inconsistency in their teachings. The worst part is, being taught about sexual morality from the likes of them will probably make it harder for her to ever see the truth right. There is always hope, but we really need to pray for her.

I did not watch the TED talk she did, but I read a synopsis someone posted in a group. I agree with the problems she's pointed out, and that gentleness is the way to solve most and maybe all of our problems. I also note however, that Adolph Hitler probably believed that 2+2 is 4. that doesn't make 2+2 something other than 4. Even if people are really really terrible, it doesn't mean EVERYTHING they believe is wrong. Something being delivered the way out of balance and completely the wrong way wrong way doesn't make it all wrong.

Something being handled the right way doesn't make it right, either.
People instinctively and unconsciously begin to adopt the mindsets and views of those who love them, who they depend on and have relationship with. she did it growing up, and she has done it as an adult because she is human. People reaching out to you doesn't guarantee that they are right in their views or their lifestyle or their interpretations, though.

 The only bad part is, if she is now doctrinally in favor of homosexuality, this is not going to do that much to remove the polarization, because it still reinforces the notion that to be gentle and listen (like James 1:5 clearly says to do) is equal to starting to justify sin. I've always said that nobody did more to advance the LGBT movement than Westboro Baptist Church. The older ones in the lgbt movement didn't think they'd live to see gay marriage be legal, I've read. Without WBC, I really doubt they would have. WBC makes some type of martyrs out of just about everybody, because they're so extremely mean. Evidently, the effects reach to the founders own children.

We need people who stick to their values *consistently* and humbly, and deliver it the right way. The enemy isn't going to work as hard to get people who do inadvertently justify sin to discredit themselves through bad behavior; he has something to gain if they don't. If they flip out just enough to provoke people who don't, and soften us up for his assaults on *our* conscience and character, then he is in ship shape. The people who justify sin start doing it with a good attitude, and the people who should be the balancing force go all unbalanced and off the deeper end. meanwhile the whole ship sinks that everybody of any philosophical position is on.

A nice big disaster for him.

We gotta break that pattern, like now. God, please send correction to your church, let her learn the lesson that this multi-faceted spiritual tragedy
teaches. Please let us all see the light and find the right way somehow.

Amen.

~Mother Star.
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It's Amazing What You Can Learn from a Song

Not everybody would expect to gain encouragement from a doom metal song.

But I did.

I don't typically discuss what I give up for lent, because it seems almost like either bragging or making too light of something that should seriously matter. The last two years,since I've bee practicing it, I gave up chocolate for lent. One I gave up heavy and dark music also. THAT was hard. Lent isn't supposed to about making yourself miserable though, its supposed to be about growing up, maturing on the inside. It's supposed to be a season of inner growth and of getting rid of things that need to go out of your life. I'm trying to give up pushing to hard and driving myself toward goals with too much obsession and fervor.

I'm in the middle of getting demoted, I think. I expect it anyway. I am not well enough to do this new job, my foot is killing me, I think I have bone spur, and it's being on feet 12 hours a day, on concrete. That on top of anxiety was a bad enough mix, my brain apparently got so flooded with cortisol (stress hormone), there were moments I couldn't even read. It feels like, yet again, growth has been thwarted, frost has come and killed off what I had growing.

I listened to this song, "The Arrival" by Skepticism, which I've heard a bunch of times before, yet I never really heard it like this. Lyrics as follows.

Skepticism

Arrived autumn
With a visit uninvited
And by chill slowly growing
With a lesson fully dreadful
And by message all displeasing

Then arrived autumn
With a growing understanding
And by vision slowly clearing
With belief calmly growing
And by readiness to embrace

Then arrived autumn
With unpleasant companion
And with frost overwhelming
With a lack of will to stand still
And with movement backwards drawing

Then arrived Autumn
Not the light of spring to follow
Nor a summer nor a winter
With autumn tints the forests glowing
And with leaves newly falling

Then arrived
I to visit uninvited
With a message to me ageless
Carrying the understanding
Year of autumns one to embrace

I listened to it several times, and realized what a wonderful message is in it, and how timely it is for me now. I never have given up on my dreams, but that shouldn't mean that everything I do is to get back what the frost has killed off. "Lack of will to stand still," boy can I relate. Like I said, I'm trying to give up pushing to hard for lent, because it's killing me, it is more often than not just driving me crazy. I need to enjoy the autumn, enjoy the time when things aren't going my way, when it seems like I'm going backwards.
It is good to not give up but I have to stop pushing for Spring to come in the middle of another season. Hating the frost that comes killing everything you're working on is understandable, but still try to at least enjoy the color in the trees. Embrace the season, even if it is winter. Accept the timing and wait for your Spring, whenever it comes. That's what I shall try to do for lent and, hopefully, thereafter.

Godspeed.

~Mother star.

To Christians With Same Sex Attractions

One of my old crushes was doing a radio interview today. Melissa Etheridge has a new album out, all covers of 50's and early 60's tunes, and older blues tunes. I had forgotten entirely about that. Obviously, the radio interview didn't cause me to start going all crazy or anything, but it reminded me of another time... Then I remembered other crushes like that. I was almost afraid that remembering would bring it back, which it didn't, but that reminded me of the torment that so often goes with that kind of temptation. You're always afraid it will be triggered, and that you will feel terrible while you sit there with whatever positive chemicals God made for romance flooding your system at the same time. it is very confusing. And awful. I can understand why people would want to just give up.
I wanted to give up. But I didn't. And now I'm talking about the whole thing in the past tense, as I have been for a long time.

A post someone made in a facebook group I am in:
"The Book of Romans chapters 5 through 8 are very powerful. Ask the Holy Spirit to intercede and guide you through the scripture readings. For the scripture is Spiritual and communicates with our Spirit."
When I was walking through it I read those a lot. I didn't think it was helping that much,only a little. but i think it kept feeding me and i kept on growing.

Abraham waited decades for his answer to prayer, and I remember thinking I didn't want to have to do that, but I told myself it didn't matter, my life and my being was God's and if for some reason he would make me wait that long i would do so. I bet Abraham wanted to spend his youth running and playing and wrestling with his kid. He didn't get that, but he did still get the kid.
It was definitely not that longfor me.It was years but not decades. Also I have found since that more healing is needed of the wounds that made it possible for me to be tempted that way. I am still healing, but I have still been walking free, as in, without any same sex attractions and in my case also having opposite sex attractions, for along time despite those wounds. Don't get discouraged by seeing a new pile of wounds you never realized you had that need healing. It doesn't absolutely guarantee a delay in your answer. However, having the wounds exposed may still be part of God's work in freeing you...

Its like a metaphor Corrie ten Boom used to use: she showed a cross-stitch she was doing and showed the back side, which looked a mess. she said "Life is like a weaving between my god and me. He sees the upper,"  she showed the front of the cross stitch" "and I, the underside." then she showed the back/bottom again, which looked like a tangle mess of crazy threads going this way and that way.
Everybody has that problem, it just comes in many forms. Some people its crippling disease, for some people its a temptation for some kind of sin, some people it is poverty, or crazy relatives. For some people, its a war torn and starving country! Or combination of these things. Never let the enemy make you feel isolated, like this temptation makes you different from others who don't experience it. all of us are different, but all of is are the same. just keep walking, knowing who He said you are, and stick to that.

Don't give up. It is not who you are. We all do get to decide who we want to be and what direction we want our life and thinking to go. And God never makes carry anything alone, He's there and there are others even if you just don't see it right now.
Godspeed.
Btw, Just to make sure there is no confusion, I did not use any "reparative therapy" and I definitely do not endorse that.
~Mother Star

Keep on walking in the light that you have. As the sun rises, more will be seen. But stay on the road you must travel until you reach your destination, whether the journey be short, or lengthy.

You Cannot Lose What You Are!

You can't lose what you are!

You cannot lose what you are, you simply cannot. If God made you something, a man or a woman, you can't do anything to not be that. “Be a man!” is like telling the water to be wet, or to be water.

Lucifer was created a powerful celestial being, and was created to worship God. He fell, and his nature was corrupted beyond redemption (Ez.28:11-19, Is. 14:12-20). Yet in Jude verse 9, we see that he is still a powerful celestial being. His nature was corrupted, he lost his job forever, his destiny was not fulfilled, yet what he was, the basic thing that he was, did not change. He still is that.

In Judges 19:22-30 we find a group of rapists assaulting somebody until she died! I can’t say much for the guy she was actually with, either. It does not say anywhere that any of these guys were OK to behave as they did, but it does say that they were men - “Men of Belial [the devil]” or in the NASB “a perverse lot” is what it calls them. Their natures were corrupted severely, whether beyond redemption or not we don't know, but pretty darn bad. Even with guys this bad, the Bible doesn't say that they were not men at all, it says what kind of men they were – really super-crappy ones. They did not lose basically what they were, but their destinies were not getting fulfilled by them acting like that. They are did the opposite of what they were created to do – I think the guy she was with did too – but they were still men, just as Satan is basically a celestial being like he has always been. 

You get to choose what kind of man you are, but it is not up to you to make yourself one. God already did that; that ship has sailed. You cannot lose your manhood by losing your job, or by any kind of moral failure, no matter how bad, or by anything bad happening to you or by anything anyone does to you. No matter what anyone says.

It is an incredibly painful thing to think that you are not what you are, particularly as far as gender is concerned. People will go to mind-boggling extremes to satisfy the need to believe they are men or women, and parents will go to amazing lengths for their kids in this area too. It even seems to be a stronger drive than self-preservation or avoidance of physical pain. or than protecting kids from harm. Below, I have embedded footage of one of the less horrific male rights of passage I've heard of. Its pretty intense! Some initiations for girls are even worse than almost any I've heard of for boys. It can't be fun to walk around feeling like “the other shoe is going drop any minute” and expose you as some kind of posturing phony, or "not a 'real' man" or some such. Dude, there is no other shoe. There can be no other shoe. God making you what you are is not a shoe in the first place, therefore there is no need to assume there's another one gonna show up any minute that will be the opposite somehow. It can't happen. There is only what is, and that's what you are. You can't lose that. So stop worrying about it, and letting Satan push you around by telling you any impossible “If… then…” stuff, putting conditions on something that cannot even change. Your mind is your mind, you have control over what goes on up there. You don’t have to believe what is not true, regardless of what those around you believe or say.
There is nothing you can ever need to prove to God, God made you and knows everything about you, and He understands everything.

Again, there is nothing you can ever need to prove to God, and God's opinion is the only one that ultimately counts.
Any situation or threat that causes you to doubt yourself, to fear or wonder in this area, honestly cannot actually take what you are away from you. All it's doing is showing you where you have built your "house" of gender identity, and perhaps self-worth, on sand instead of rock. If you really aren't enough for whatever you have been called to do or created for, than God failed, since you did not make yourself. Can God fail? Can God get it wrong? Or do we sometimes ask things of ourselves and each other that He doesn't, putting human will above His? Can God do shoddy craftsmanship, or do we just not appreciate or understand what he made in us? He can't fail, and he made you. That is the rock that identity should be built on. Everything else is merely sand.

“Woe to him who says to his father, 'What begettest thou?' or to the woman, 'What have you brought forth?” “Woe to him who says to his maker, 'What makest thou?' or 'Thy work, he hath no hands.'” To doubt yourself in this manner is to doubt God, and that is actually a sin. Sin is to be resisted, not accommodated, or accepted as status quo. Declare war on it. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. We demolish arguments and any high and lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” A “stronghold” is pretty much a mindset or a deep-seated belief that is not true, in this case it is a cultural entrenchment. There are peoples in the world who don’t think men need to “prove their manhood” all the time. At least as late as the early 1990’s, the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia and the Mbuti of the Ituri forest in Congo were examples... 

I challenge you to begin to prayerfully pursue and root out anything in your life that reinforces these lies for you that you actually have control over (some things in our lives that do this, we don't have control over, but we're not responsible for that) – especially your media choices and the things that you say. I don't care if it is Christ-professing or well-intentioned media or whatever kind of influence it is. Maybe there is some good mixed in with the bad; mixing about six spoonfuls of potent vitamins with a teaspoon or so of rat poison is still gonna make you sick.  Get rid of it. If you can identify what it is, than get rid of it if you can. Give the enemy no place in your life.

It’s been around 20 years since I began the process of removing the poison of pornography and “women’s magazines” that basically tell me how to fix everything that is not even wrong with my appearance, and other such crap out of my life. I can say that it is a difficult process sometimes, and at times it is a sacrificial road to walk for a little while, but is well worth it. I encourage you to prayerfully give it a go.

Take care and Godspeed.

~Mother Star

God made everything in nature what it is. Despite how confused we humans can get about ourselves, either thinking to much or too little of ourselves, who and what we are doesn't go away. We can't putout the sun by disbelieving init, and w can't cease to be who we are no mattr what we think or how we feel or what we do because we doubt ourselves.