In Our Image

One foggy morning about a year or so ago, I poured myself a cup of coffee and looked for something to read. There were a variety of books stacked on the table in the living room, each stack containing different subject matters. On top of the stack of religious books was the bible. I picked it up and opened to Genesis and began to read. Upon reaching Genesis 1:26 I read the following:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

What did it mean? I continued reading until I came upon the following, in Genesis 3:22-24:

“And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

Intrigued, I continued to read and came across yet another puzzling entry in Genesis 11:7 within the tower of Babel story. I read “…let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

Why were the plural pronouns “us” and “our” used in these verses? Could it be that those ancient astronaut theorists were correct? Were we created by extraterrestrials?

Accept It On Faith

I was brought up a Roman Catholic. I went to a parochial grammar school and parochial high school back in the 1950’s and 60’s. I was taught that if you weren’t a baptized Roman Catholic, you were going to hell. Simple as that. We had a family friend who was a priest and I can remember my mother saying to him “Say there’s this little Jewish woman who was a good daughter, and is now a good wife and mother and never did a bad thing in her life, and you’re telling me she’s going to hell?” And he’d kind of talk his way around it, but still basically say “yes, she’s going to hell.” That would drive my mother crazy.

And you never questioned your faith. I can remember my best friend’s father back then, and the word was that poor Mr. Wallace had lost his faith; he was researching other religions. And I felt sorry for him and his family. We were taught to never question; we were taught to “accept it on faith”.

Over the decades that had passed since then I did start to question my faith. What I specifically questioned was the role of the Roman Catholic Church. How can the Roman Catholic Church be the one true church and yet orchestrate the Inquisition? What about the Crusades? What about all those corrupt popes that had existed over the centuries? Pope Alexander VI was a Borgia and had seven children during the time he was cardinal and then pope (Lucrezia Borgia was one of his daughters). So I have my own issues with organized religion, but I believe in God and I believe in the teachings of Jesus.

Many Moons Ago I Saw A UFO

I must have been around 14. My mother and I sat outside on summer nights in our backyard in Connecticut to enjoy the cool night air and watch the sky. We knew the flight paths of the airplanes from the New York airports to Boston and Europe. We knew the path of Telstar’s orbit and we would watch for it as it passed overhead. We sat in the sunken garden for hours on a nice night and observed the stars, planets, shooting stars and everything else that occupied the night sky.

One night I noticed a relatively dim light low in the southeastern horizon. It appeared to be stationary, but it was a light or star that I did not recall seeing before. I kept my eyes on it while taking in all that was going on in the sky above me. It seemed to me that it was moving ever so slightly. If you looked at it, you couldn’t see movement, but if you looked away and then looked back several minutes later, it appeared to have moved northward along the horizon in relation to where it had been before.

After watching this for probably a half an hour or so, I brought it to my mother’s attention. She didn’t remember seeing it before either and she kept her eyes on it as did I. Over the next half hour we both agreed that, yes, it was still moving north. Now we were really intent on watching it. It had progressed a little more than half way across the eastern horizon. We watched and watched and it appeared to have stopped. We continued to watch. Minutes passed and no movement. We were now up on our feet watching it. We were alarmed by the lack of movement. What could possibly stop dead in the sky? There were no sounds and it seemed to be very distant.

Then, from that dead stop, it made a 90 degree turn and was zooming directly toward us. I felt that it was reading our minds…it knew we were watching it and it was coming to us. As it zoomed in our direction, the light was getting brighter and bigger with still no sound emanating from it. It was almost directly overhead. Scared, I took off and ran toward the house. I could hear my mother’s footsteps following me. We reached the back door and ran into the kitchen and locked the door behind us. We were afraid to look out the windows for fear something would be looking in. We discussed this episode quite often in later years and often wondered if we had lost any time that night….were we abducted? We couldn’t recall losing time and we had no evidence that we were abducted. But now, more than 45 years later, that memory is still alive and I still wonder.