As I was growing up I grew up in a church where people were always very into positive thinking like many people in more Christian Science types of churches like the Saint Germain Foundation and Unity Church and Science of Mind and Science of Religious Science when I was growing up. for example, we went to see Reverand William Hornaday in Hollywood at the church he spoke at then which was a really cool church there at that time. My Aunt and I and my cousin (my aunt's son) and my Mother and sometimes my grandmother would go too.
So, even though we weren't full time members of this church this was a very positive View of reality and they always had really positive ideas and good things to tell people to encourage them to stay alive and have good lives.
However, I was a member through my parents church of the Saint Germain Foundation which they were in charge of in Los Angeles on Hope street then and I sometimes wondered about people who were trying so hard to be positive it was like they were going to fall over backwards trying to be positive when their lives weren't working at all. However, people like this were much more common in the 1950s who had barely survived World War II or the Great Depression at all.
But, this one lady who was single and maybe a little Crazy and maybe 50 years old or more came up to me because I was the son of the heads of this particular church. She grabbed me by the lapels of my Dress suit with a tie and wouldn't let go and said, "I love money. I love money. I love money by God's own hand."
and I'm 10 year old and wanting really bad to hit this woman in the mouth for being so crazy and scaring the shit out of me because I thought she was completely nuts (which she might have been). However, this sort of thing really turned me off to religion in general when I ran into this kind of extreme behavior but most people weren't like this at all. Just a very few. However, as a minister's son I was always taught to be polite whether someone was rich or crazy or even both sometimes. So, I was taught to be polite to rich or poor or middle class people whether they were completely crazy or not. I was trained very well.
However, then I watched a lot of people die because they were so unrealistic that they wouldn't go to doctors either because they believed God was going to heal them (which might have been true up to a point) but when you take it beyond that point you are very likely to die from not seeing a doctor.
So, I watched a whole lot of people die when they likely didn't have to. However, the other side of this is doctors would come onto TV and smoke cigarettes and tell people that it was safe to smoke Cigarettes too. So, who is going to believe crazy doctors like this. And you wondered whether they were actually doctors or just lying to you in the commercial on TV.
However, then I got to be in my 40s and realized that if I wasn't more positive in my life I might die. So, I met and married the most optimistic yet practical woman I have ever dated and she has helped save my life all the way to age 78 which for me is some kind of miracle in itself.
But, I probably wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't married her and would likely have been dead by 50 with the heart virus I got then from Fall of 1998 to May of 1999 when doctors told me I was going to live once again instead of dying like they thought I might before then.
So, a lot of surviving to old age for me at least is being around someone who is both very practical (like I am) but also a real positive sort of person but also a very strong person emotionally and mentally like I am.
And yet, we have completely opposite skill sets which allows us to survive almost anything that has come up in our lives so far.
By God's Grace
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