January 29 - Joanne Sprott was raised as a Roman Catholic, but with a love of all mythological stories that began in elementary school. By the time she went to college she had tired of the hypocrisy within the church and drifted off to a spiritual kind of humanism, with a strong affinity for the universal concept of a divine energy, like the Force in the Star Wars movies. In 1998, she was re-introduced to the New Age with the Conversations With God books by Neale Donald Walsch. She then started a program of inner healing and spiritual exploration with other sources, including the Kryon material, past-life regression training, and soul retrieval/unification work. In addition, she was inspired by her inner muse to write some of her passions into both poetry and prose. For her talk today, Joanne is going to challenge the audience to think and feel about why "bad" things happen to "good" people. From the biblical story of Job to present-day natural disasters, we humans continue to wonder about the motivations, if any, of the divine spirit, or Mother Earth, or our own surprisingly creative abilities to challenge ourselves. She will explore this "why" and show how you can find inner peace with the way life is.