Good vs Evil

My baby sister recently started seeing someone new. She asked me what my beliefs were politically. Whether I considered myself a Liberal. She didn't offer me the option of being conservative, I guess she knew as much that it wasn't a possibility. In truth, I am a moderate. There are things that I am conservative about and things that I am liberal about. I won't go into detail about them here unless a topic specifically warrants it.

This conversation lead to a discussion about religion. Apparently she and he discussed all of the "hot topics," you know, politics, religion, and abortion. Abortion is another topic I will avoid here unless absolutely necessary; however, I will be straight about religion. I am a Green Wiccan. Which is to say that I don't worship any deities. That isn't to say that I do not believe that something higher doesn't exist, my feeling is that there IS something higher, I just don't worship it and if I conduct a spell, I do it with TANGIBLE items and infuse them with my own spirit or the spirit of nature. Nature is as close as I will come to any kind of deity. But, again, nature is tangible.

My baby sister told me that she told her boyfriend, "I believe in a devil and a god, but they aren't necessarily YOUR god or YOUR devil." She went on to explain to me that her boyfriend didn't understand her meaning. I do. I understand it clearly, but then I am her sister. The most simple way to translate what she said is to say that she believes in good and evil. I'd wonder about any religion or any person who did not acknowledge that both good and evil exist.

I've been listening to a book, Green River Running Red by Anne Rule. At first, I was only listening to it to keep my mind occupied while I worked. Then, at some point today, I really started listening to what the narrator was reading. The book is about the Green River Killer who slayed "working women" in the 80's. The stories of these women and this THING is absolutely horrific and heart wrenching. The worse part is that the killer isn't the only evil in the book. Stories how some of the women and the girls ended up in their last occupation contain evil too.

Where does it come from? We all have the potential to be evil don't we? How is it some of us chose not to be? I have a friend, she is one of the most wonderful people that I have ever met. She had a life right out of the book I mentioned (not the "working girl" part). Yet, she is good--the very essence of it really. What saved her? I didn't have the greatest life either. Yea, there are plenty of others who have had it far worse, but what has kept me above the tide of despair? The answer has to, MUST, lie somewhere in the portion of the brain we "don't" use.

What Once Was...

This is only a short post to get me started. I do a lot of thinking. Most of the time I have a little journal I carry around with me to write my thoughts down in. Unfortunately, I do most of my thinking while I am driving or while I am listening to podcasts. I am far faster at typing than I am at writing and I tend to want to share some of my thoughts, so I am going to use Blogger to do that venting.