My 87-year-old aunt, who has always been like a mother to me, recently poured out her heart to me about what it is like to be a covert atheist in her retirement community.

"If anyone knew I'd be shunned," she said in a whisper.

I say this because Easter and Passover is being celebrated this month and it made me think about her, along with my grandmother, who was an agnostic, and my father, who said he wished he could believe in something, but just couldn't because it didn't make any sense.

The irony is they were, are, the most spiritual people I ever had the privilege of sharing my life with. Kind, compassionate, giving, non-judgemental, they opened their homes to everyone with a kind of immeasurable, unconditional love that astounds me when I think about it.

I never felt worthy in the face of such pureness of heart but that never seemed to matter.

New-agers call it the "Christ-consciousness" that transcends denominations and religious affiliations.

"You aren't an atheist," I tried to tell my aunt. "You believe that when you die you become one with the universe, remember? That our energy force joins forces with the cosmos. That's believing in something."

"No, no, don't mix me up with your grandmother. She thought there might be an afterlife. I know there isn't," she maintained.

My grandmother was a devout Catholic back in the old country and one of the best singers in the church choir until she witnessed at age 16 the priest brutally beating some of the girls who sang off key. The last straw, the stinging blow that severed her ties with organized religion came in America when the priest wouldn't baptize her son because she had no money to pay the church fee.

It seems like our country has been struggling with a variety of religious identities lately as people arm themselves with dogmas and take sides over right and wrong.

As painful as it is to watch I couldn't be more thrilled. It's like watching birth pains of a new nation. We've seen the outcome of a conservative faction armed with a so-called religious right and now people have to decide whether or not it's what they want to see continue.

There's a smell of change in the wind,a pull in the opposite direction as people feel out a different approach.

I like to pretend I'm an observer from an alien planet, watching it all unfold.

Many are saving the year 2012 is the beginning of "Heaven on earth."

NASA predicts that the Sun will reverse its own magnetic poles during 2012 as aresult of reaching the end of current 11-year sunspot cycle. Some believe this will amplify the effects of retarding magnetic field on earth, as harmful charged particles blasted away from the sun would more easily penetrate the earth's atmosphere.

Check out The Year 2012 and you'll see the predictions, originating from many ancient sources (that's eerie in itself!) including the Mayan calendar, which stops on Dec. 21, 2012.

* The book "The Nostradamus Code" speaks of a series of natural disasters caused by a comet which will allow the third anti-Christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a possible nuclear war, although in the strictest sense it is unspecific as to nuclear war or some other natural or man caused destruction.

* "The Orion Prophecy" claims that the Earth's magnetic field will reverse that year.

*"The Return of Quetzalcoatl" by Daniel Pinchbeck discusses theories of a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012.

*Terence McKenna's mathematical novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which a great number of things could happen, including "hyperspatial breakthrough", planetesimal impact, alien contact, historical metamorphosis, metamorphosis of natural law, solar explosion and "quasar ignition at the galactic core," whatever that means.

*The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation of which Jesus spoke, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgment.


*Many new age spiritualists and philosophers believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012.

I'll be 55, and I don't know about you, but good or bad, I can't wait.