Odds & Ends

For more than a decade, I have used blog2print.com to print off a hard copy of my blog. I have it all in bound books that take up about 2 feet of shelf space. But alas, blog2print has sent notices that as of May 15, it is no more. My account is still there but the e-mail said it was going out of business. When I received the first notice, I had the first four months of 2024 bound up and shipped to me. But I don't know what to do now about keeping a hard copy.

I do this because blogger is free, and nothing free lasts forever. I have no idea how many blogs Google hosts for free, but one day, I feel sure, there will be a big notice that says, "Blogger is going away," and then what will I do with 20 years of posts? At least this way I have them. I'm not saying that I write great words here. But there are things written here, and pictures posted here, that aren't anywhere else except in those hard copies I have printed out. One day those hard copies may go into a burn barrel, but I want them for now. So I guess I will have to look for another printer company. Anyone use some other company to keep up with their blogs?

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I recently listened to a book called The Whole Town is Talking, by Fannie Flagg (2016). It was characteristic of her writing, but it had a bit of a musing that wasn't what I would have thought to have found in one of her books. In this story, people die and go to the cemetery, where they then talk to one another, sometimes for generations. But some people (already dead) disappear from the cemetery, and no one knows where they go. The reader is left to assume they go somewhere - apparently the Christian heaven or hell - but it's not spelled out.

At the risk of spoiling the book, I will note what Flagg suggested: that they become other living things. She doesn't reveal this until the end, when some of the characters are birds, grass, bugs, etc. In other words, every living thing is spirit.

This is called animism, and it is an ancient concept that predates Christianity and other religions of the Book by thousands of years. At its core, animism holds that all things – from rocks and trees to animals and humans – possess a spiritual essence or soul. This spiritual essence is often referred to as a “spirit” or “life force.” 

I have often thought about this myself without actually looking into it (I had to look up what it was called). If one subscribes to more scientific theories of origin, then one must wonder about such things as souls. It is hard to deny that living things have something going on inside of them. A robotic dog isn't going to be as much fun as a real dog, after all. 

All one has to do is gaze into someone's eyes to see that there is such a thing as spirit.

Given that, then, where does spirit come from? If it was here in the beginning, how is that we continue to expand the human population? Where would the new spirits come from as the population grew from hundreds to billions?

If the spirit was a piece of every living thing, then potentially all of the humans were at one time a bug or a fish or a piece of grass, maybe.

I don't know the answer to this question; many people will consider only what they have been taught via their various religions. That's fine. I like to roll the thoughts around in my head, though, to see where they fall. I truly was surprised to find this concept in Flagg's book, but I feel like she introduced the topic in such a way that most people would not find it offensive, but a bit of silly fun.