One Long & Very Strange Journey To The Center Of...NOTHING.

I am admittedly a bit restless this evening and I really don't know why. So I haven't a clue where this post may lead us but you are certainly welcome to come along for the ride...


But it isn't really all that unusual for me to feel a general uneasiness at times. I often feel unsettled or just not "together" at times so perhaps that is what's going on here. Or just maybe it is the beginning of the END of the world as we know it and all humanity will come crashing down along with it.


You never really know do you?! The Book of Revelation in the Bible was one of the most frightening and influential things I had ever read as boy. I can't say I really understood it all back then (I can't say that I totally understand it all today either) but I knew the author was talking about the end of the world and it wasn't going to be pretty for people like me who weren't follower's of Jesus. Quite frankly, reading through it reminded me of the serious Acid Trips I used to take as a teenager but the Book of REV definitely would have been classified as a VERY Bad Trip because of the vividly frightening imagery and implications of doom and eternal damnation...


Not quite sure what got me thinking about the Book Of Revelation today...it's been that kind of day where I've thought about HEAVY and important "why are we here" type things with eternal implications. Not sure why my mind goes to such places but it sometimes does, like my mind has a mind all IT's OWN!!

As a child and then as a teenager...I was frequently thinking about and contemplating God and eternal life, war, poverty and forgiveness along with other heavy and difficult subjects that seemed to set me apart from other children as a boy.  I've written here on Shell Shock that as far back as I can remember I dreamt vividly of war. I would dream of being under fire in the trenches of the Great War (WWI to us Americans) as a British Soldier. Dreaming often of rats and rain, shell fire, hunger, poison gas...death and the stench of thousands of un-buried corpses rotting  in the sun out in No-Mans Land.


Those dreams had such a profound effect on me that I actually began to believe that I had lived before. Pretty heavy stuff for a 10 year old boy to be thinking about, eh?! But that was the conclusion that I had come to because nothing else made sense...the dreams were too real, I felt SO connected to  what was happening that it HAD to have happened. To this day I am still somewhat confused and unsettled about that aspect of my life. To the point that I even consulted my pastor about it...he told me not to get to upset about it....just relax and let time take it's course. I believe that is really good advice...don't work myself up into a frenzy about something I have no control over.

So I am officially a Christian who still holds open the possibility of reincarnation... and I'll leave it at that but I figure the God I believe in is all powerful and HE can do anything so why couldn't he allow that to happen...one never knows. I certainly don't know the answer...


Anyway I  write about such things here because that is what Shell Shock Serenade is all about but I don't really spend much time thinking about it in the real world. Naw...there is too much cool stuff going on and that leads me back to my original thought in this post. I'm feeling a tad out-of-sorts yet things are on the surface going really well. That always tends to make me a bit wary because I look for signs of trouble in my life. That way perhaps I can anticipate trouble and not get ambushed by it...


Once again I can even shock and surprise myself with some of the stuff I can end up thinking about. It's no wonder I always felt like an out-sider when it came to relating to other people. I knew in my heart that there weren't many kids thinking such thoughts as I was. I didn't know any other 5th graders who were fighting in the trenches of the Great War every night after they got home from school!!


That is why today I just trust God...I'll let HIM sort out the origin of things, it isn't my job...all I have to do is faithfully serve HIM and I believe quite strongly in the Spiritual Solutions provided by my CREATOR and written about in the Bible.


Funny...but after getting all of that stuff I have just written out of my system I can now say that I don't feel so out-of-sorts anymore! It's funny how that works...Isn't it?!

(PHOTOS: Kathy Tomson)