Here it is after 1am again and I seek to settle some thoughts in place so perhaps I can lay down and go to sleep quickly tonight. I am taking a Women's Studies class online this semester. The class is challenging, both in work load and in forcing us to use our minds. Given the nature of the class, it invariably stirs up lots of memories, and high emotions in my class mates and for myself. We are discussing patriarchy, right now, and that is one step quickly taken to religion. Religion, politics, women's issues, all thrown into the pot and stirred around! It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I have issues with organized religion of all sorts. I feel that anytime human beings get their fingers into the mix, a mess is more likely to come out than a delicious cake. I feel like I am getting to the point where I don't react with negative feelings towards religion, I have a deep respect for people with strong religious beliefs, it is just not a path I can take. I guess that leads me once again to an inbetween state. I am not an atheist, because I feel there is something "more". I don't believe that life is cut and dry, black and white, explained away by science. I live with the eternal hope that there is something just beyond my vision that I haven't quite seen yet. However, I cannot embrace any religion I have looked into. The closest I get to a religion, is more a philosophy, that of Taoism. But even that is not in the traditional Taoist path, but of the path of Winnie the Pooh. ;) People who want to put me in a neatly labeled box seem to find it frustrating, because when they ask just what do I believe...I can only shrug and say I know more about what I do not believe than what I do believe. So I strive for balance in my life, for not fighting the flow, but moving with it. For not asking why, but focusing on how I react. For accepting that life is made of stages and I cannot live in all the stages at one time. To live open to possibilities...to walk the wall, to live at the edge the abyss. I've already looked in and seen the monster Nietzsche warned of...it was only me, and not so scary for all that.