A Thumbs Up

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 In my belief system, unless one has intentionally taken a human life, everyone gets a thumbs up from God.  I don't really care about one's beliefs.  I come from a super religious family, but I'm different.  I've had best friends who have been Atheists and I've known the most religious people in the world.  But in MY book everyone gets a thumbs up with the rare exception.  It's just how I think.

I don't care what one has done, how one thinks, or what one believes or doesn't believe.  I have one criteria for writing a person off.  Just one.  And whether one is religious or not, this is my ONLY criteria.  I've probably thought this way my entire life, but as I've grown older I had to learn.  The whole world could write me off, but I have never taken a human life and in my own Spirituality, this is all that matters.  

I don't expect many to think as I do, but I allow for most any belief and any non-belief, for that matter.  This isn't what I was taught all through my educational career and early years in ministry.  But I've been around enough to see so many ways to live and believe.  In most any church my belief system would be heresy.  But I don't care.  In fact, my not caring could drive some people crazy.  I have to believe a certain way or I don't believe anything.

But I believe in something.  The right for every life to live as they choose to live.  Some might say that's not enough, but I write off fewer people this way.  In fact I hardly ever have written someone off in my belief system.  It's why I don't care if I am the only person I know who smokes a pipe.  I could be written off by others for my smoking a pipe.  But I've been written off for less.

Everyone gets written off for something by someone or another.  But it's not that I don't believe in anything or nothing, as the case might be.  But it is what it is.  I very seldom visit my past.  I look forward and hardly ever look back.  I'm too old to change the way I think or correct my habits, but too I'm still growing and as long as I'm alive that growth won't stop.

I'm still learning about pipe smoking often learning from those with less experience that me.  But this is what life is about.  We're all learning.  Today it is my Nording Angel pipe with almost the last of my Half and Half.  Thank you for your time.  Peace to each one of you and a hearty thumbs up!

Dave 

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