h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe a would be more appropriate! There is an old saying:
"It isn't what you know; it's who you know." Sure was appropriate in your case, wasn't it?

true! but is better than a

Good is certainly better than a poor . I'm getting readyfor a board meeting tonight, so either would help.

RJR, I'll see your and raise you two Buffalo Sweats!

Hyp, I have an experimental recipe under construction...called Jones Crusher. Guaranteed to ward off chavs, Jehova's Witnesses and smellfungi.

Hey count me in for a bucket of that stuff

Sounds like just the thing, HDD. What would happen if we gave one to the smellfungus? Would she explode or something?

You wish. Sounds like smellfungus needs her very own personal mushroom casserole made with I know just the kind of mushroom. . .

Good luck at the meeting, Hypatia.

Aah, yes, the deathcap mushroom.

You know, I never really acquired a taste for . But I love my .

A casserole that would make a smellfungus explode? May I have the recipe, please?

If garlic works for vampires, perhaps it would work for smellfungi. So, a garliky, mushroomy casserole. It should include a fowl of some kind. And something green.....canned asparagus, perhaps. That's pretty awful.

A mushy overcooked brussels sprout is the most diabolically foul green vegetable I have ever tasted.

Fowl? Vulture.

So, we are looking for a vulture deathcap brussels sprouts casserole, I see. I'm just looking that up on Recipes.com . . . Hmm. Well, we may have to create our own recipe.

I like the angel. I completely believe that the music box may have been started playing by some benevolent energy being as a way to send a message. I have had too many mystical experiences while giving massages to not believe that there are angels and guides out there for us.

I'd like to think that is the case, hmh. On the other hand, I don't want wishful thinking to cause me to find little signs and messages where none actually exist.

My is simply: the happening was a good one.

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking on the best side of things. If you look at an occurence and it feels like it was a sign, then perhaps it WAS a sign. A sort of Occams Razor, if you will: The simplest explanation is the true explanation. I think we spend entirely too much energy discounting our intuition, simply because we don't understand it and there is no "scientific" explanation for it. And if it comforts a person to see an event as a sign, then what's wrong with that?

Nothing at all wrong with it. I have come to the conclusion that if our beliefs make our lives easier to cope with, then that's a good thing.

I remember a conversation years ago with a friend of mine who is a Jesuit. He is a DD and has 2 PhDs, one in psychology. The Jesuits I know tend to be overachievers. We were discussing religious rituals and sacred spaces. I asked him how he could encourage what I considered superstitious nonsense- specifically that statues of saints posessed actual healing powers. He had already agreed with me that the statues are just plaster and wood. So he asked me what harm it does for people to believe they will receive some benefit from offering a prayer to the statue. If it gives them comfort to believe a spiritual force is being channeled through the statue or a candle flame or whatever that will result in a benefit to them, then what difference does it make if it is technically true or not? The belief/superstition serves a useful purpose. The power comes from focusing on the intention in a positive, hopeful way.

I honestly believe there is a benevolent spirit in the kids' house. They feel her presence on occasion. I truly believe it is in someway connected to Lord C.'s mother--our daughter's grandmother. They have never had occasion to be afraid. I think she may be their guardian angel.

Our Grandmother had a picture in the living room of her home of the guardian angel watching over two children crossing a bridge. Somehow I always felt safe in that room.

I have of late, beginning to belive in the "guardian angel" theory.... why? I do not know, when? again i do not know, Where? it all started? thrice I do not know,

Strange init, or it could be the cheese weaving its magic

I have been thinking about this thread and past conversations with Hypatia especially... and realised that I have a dilemma. I don't know why or how but I believe in science - imperfect as it is. Unfortunately I also believe there is another dimension that we are blind to. This phenomenon of here being something that we cannot see touch or feel, and our blindness to it, is best described (for me) in Wordsworth's Ode to immortality.

Especially in these bits:

Verse V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww331.html

My grandmother watches over me. She is, I suppose, my guardian angel. She died in Lebanon when I was carrying my and I was in Nodnol. I dreamt one night that she came to see me in a strange house. SHe brought a little boy with her. After a seemingly nonsensical conversation, she put the little boy in my arms, kissed him, kissed me and left. The next morning I got a call that she had passed away. The little boy looked exactly like our son did three years later.

I struggle to reconcile this, which to me is knowledge because it happened to me, and the previous 'belief'. Odd huh? Unless I have been partaking of the good Rev's cheese with the mice. Good Saturday morning to you all

Perhaps it is odd, but I prefer to think of it as very beautiful.

I believe in science. My dad is a physicist, both my grandfathers were physicists specializing in optics.

But I also believe that there are things that science cannot explain. Perhaps one day it will be able to, but that does not mean that they are not real when we experience them. There have been too many times when I have known exactly what Jim was going to say, and vice versa. There have been too many times that I have put my hands on people to give them a massage and "known" that they were victims of abuse when they were children, or are being abused by their spouses now. There have been too many times when I "knew" a woman was pregnant, or that a person had cancer or a heart problem. After a while, even with my grounding in science, needing proof and experimentation and reproducible results, I have to just believe that there are some things that we cannot explain, or necessarily prove, and despite that, they are real.