It’s six-fifteen p.m. on a somewhat sleepy,

overcast, warm, early summer Sunday.

I’m sitting on my well-worn leather chair

with my feet crossed on the ottoman. The

ceiling fan lazily turns the air down my

way. It encircles my head reminding me

of a gentle breeze that cools a hot night

when slept on the back-porch of our

Chicago home when I was seven. It sinks

in that my reserved retirement, quiet even

as much as quiet is a word describing me

and my preacher life, which isn’t often, but,

then again, it is a somewhat sleepy Sunday,

is now open not only to God but the National

Security Administration, and I don’t think

I even know a single soul there.  I blog

poetry and I e-mail and I surf the web but

I don’t do Facebook for a number of reasons

including privacy concerns.  My son chuckled

at that: “They know it all, Dad.”  Turns out

he was right. I’m not sure who he was

referencing as “they,” but now I know; it’s

Big Brother, and that’s not a joke. Holy writ

indicates that the state is not there to harm

the innocent but why, I ask, must the

details of contents of  my under-ware be

stored for perpetuity somewhere in huge

computers in some obscure place in middle-

America to be examined sometime in the distant

future, perhaps, for a terrorist threat at six-fifteen

p.m. right now?  They could ask my personal

physician for my fecal sample. I would be happy

to offer them my stool to sit on.