Religious signs are everywhere

I went to Minneapolis this past weekend to the Edge Life Expo 2003. It was at the Minneapolis Convention Center and was a gathering of healing body, mind and soul.

The Edge is a magazine filled with articles on alternative healing and how to empower oneself. The convention center was filled with more than 700 booths on alternative health. There were booths where you could get a massage, purchase homemade lotions and soaps, stones and one section of the convention center had booths filled with psychic readers.

I was at the Expo with my sister Kate and daughter Bridget. I asked Bridget if she was interested in having a psychic reading. Bridget looked around at all the booths to find the most cost-effective one. The readings at this booth were advertised at $20 for a half an hour. We went up to the woman that was promoting this psychic reader. She enthusiastically told us that the half-hour reading would have the psychic speaking to Bridget's angels, spiritual guides and any relatives that have passed through to the other side that wanted to visit.

"My goodness, that's a lot of spirits showing up in half an hour, especially with so much activity going on in this big place. There doesn't seem room for all those spirits to be able to come into this place that has so much activity and so many people around. How is the reader able to concentrate with all this activity?" I asked.

The young woman gushed, "Oh she's really good. The spirits that are your relatives that have passed over will only come through if they want to. The reader can't guarantee that they will show up. If you sign up for a reading, I can schedule you for three hours from now."

We didn't want to wait around for three hours and we said no thanks. Bridget said she wasn't interested in hearing from her dead relatives anyway and she wasn't sure that she had any spiritual guides or angels hanging around her.

When I was growing up and went to Catholic school, the nuns stressed that each person had a guardian angel. My mother had a light switch in our house that had two children on it with a large angel standing behind the children with out-stretched arms, protecting them. This image frightened me whenever I took a walk by myself, as I knew that I was never alone and that my angel was always behind me. I would whip around quickly to see if I could get a glimpse of my angel. My 10-year-old son Timmy attends Catholic school and he brought home a picture of the same image as my mother's light switch.

It has a prayer to his guardian angel on it and he loves the picture and prayer. He asked me what I thought of the picture and I told him it frightened me when I was a little girl, thinking that this huge angel was always hovering over me. Timmy laughed when I told him this.

"You are weird," he said.

My mother had other religious images and icons in every room of her house.

I was frightened of all the religious paraphernalia when I was young. I felt that the painted eyes on the statues and pictures were looking right at me and could read the bad thoughts that went through my mind. I had nightmares about the images and would be afraid to go into some rooms of the house by myself, especially where the images appeared sterner. I asked my mother why she had so many statues and pictures of saints all over the house and she told me that they were there to protect us. This was no comfort, as they frightened me so much.

Now that I am older, I am no longer afraid of all the religious paraphernalia and icons that were part of my life growing up. I understand that mom had these images in her house to protect her home and family. I hope I have a guardian angel to protect and guide me; I can use all the help I can get.