In Another Life

I know the topic comes up often, mostly after a few too many drinks, but not always just in bars; the notion of past lives, yes reincarnation.  Now as funny as this may seem (to me anyway) the interest spans the spectrum from well educated to the barely made it through grammar school; the accomplished and the down trodden, it’s like everyone enjoys delving in the possibility of having been here before. 

   There are a lot of people who make a fist full of dollars developing that belief. Just as the real artist among them dwell on an ethereal balloon of perception where no barrage of facts can puncture. So pay your $20 to find out and then mull over the findings with your loved ones until the cows come home, you’re no more equipped to disprove a past existence than any other, and that might even be the Dali Lama himself.

  So then, I discovered I had been (in one of my lives) a dignified Monsignor of a large convent nestled in the lush Aosta Valley, Italy at the turn of the ninth century.  My contribution to the Western civilized world was trial by combat.  In was convoluted from my initial introduction, since mine was a test of two deposing opinions taken outside and champions of each opinion throwing snow balls at the another until one of the two conceded, (ours was a valley that stayed in snow until mid-June to early July.  Disputes after that had to pile up until the snows returned at the end of Fall).  This simple premise was taken to such an extreme I later found out that people were actually killing one another as the ultimate determining factor: nothing was further from my intent. 

   I came upon this solution based on my experience with women arguing with one another and how they would allow petty disagreements to simmer, and then fester to consume an entire community until there was just no living with any of them.  I was of the position that Nuns were no less exacting in their demands then their non-clerical sisters, so I took the issue by its horns and devised this simple resolution.  

The beauty of it was that no matter who prevailed, all who witnessed the contest could see the triumph of one over the other, thereby putting the issue to rest.  Those who contested the results, who felt it was an unfair contest in some way, were scoffed and told to their face that it was

Nun of their business.