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well, now I know that not only is something rotten in Denmark, I also know there is a dead elephant in the middle of the collective global During that twenty plus years of uncovering that huge, dead critter that occupies a central place in our reality, I was driven by the idea that I just wanted to know what was really going on in this strange world I lived in where, on the one hand, science was moving so fast that we would soon be able to destroy our planet, while on the other hand, the varied religions were telling us not to worry, God was probably going destroy it for us, and we had better believe in the “right god” or we were toast. How can a person live in a world where “the End of the World” is being predicted every minute? That’s crazy! But darned if that isn’t what just about every religion - including the New Age versions - on the planet talks about! You go to church, get scared to death in an hour and a half, warned about hellfire and damnation, and then they pass the plate so that you can pay the high priests to put in a good word for you with God so that maybe you won’t suffer as much as that jerk down the street who goes to a different church! And even if you do suffer here on earth, if you believe hard enough, and prove it by putting your money where your faith is, at least you’ ll get your reward in paradise. This was back in 1982 when I had three small children. As a mother, I wanted to know what to teach my children. I knew that what I had been taught to believe was frightening. I had grown up in a time when children were regularly taught what to do in case of an atomic bomb attack - Cuba was only 90 miles from Florida where I was born - and at the same time, the standard religious teaching of my family - mainstream Protestants - promoted the “suffer on Earth to get rewarded I knew I had certainly suffered from the state of the world and the teachings of my faith. I really, really wanted to know if this was something that I should pass on to my children. When I held my babies and rocked them or looked into their sweet, innocent faces - untroubled by the concerns of the world around, certain that Mother would make them safe - I had to ask myself “How can I tell them these things? How can I ‘break it to them’ that this world into which they have been born is so frightening and uncertain and full of traps that not only are their lives in constant danger, their very souls may be in peril?” 189 High Strangeness — Part Two living room, and I can never not see it again. in Heaven” routine.