He stood on the balcony
looking down at the pool
and the snow birds who
had come out of hibernation
on this above average
temperature day. Like an
owl he turned his head
from side to side opening
and closing his eyes very
slowly. The birds below
were bigger than the owl,
much bigger and much
fatter. They weren’t in
good shape and the owl knew
that he could swoop
down and steal their
chips and dip and beer, too.
The owl said, “Who,”
instead of here, here
to cheer
the floating birds below.
A bird looked up
from the hot tub and
asked, “Did you say
who or you?” A humming
bird buzzed the owl’s head
and the owl asked the hum-
ming bird, “Who you?” and
went inside instead
of waiting for the little bird’s reply
which might have come instead
from the bird below, “I’m
a snow bird. Why?
What kind of bird are you?”
Closing the slide
the owl just asked, “Who,
me or you?”

This is the year of the Monkey.
It’s kind of funky
being a monkey,
to which
they add wood,
so I’m a Wood Monkey,
which might mean I am a
block headed, funky monkey.
My wife, otherwise known
in the Zodiac as Rat,
surely would agree.

Wiki states that I, as a Monkey,
am capable of great good, (I) make
a great leader but (am) rather un-
predictable…intelligent, magnanimous,
charismatic, charming, authoritative,
confident, eloquent and artistic,
(Wiki could stop there.) but can be
manipulative, jealous, selfish,
aggressive, vindictive or deceitful.

I, of course, in the first
half of that description
do see
my manifest destiny,
but my wife, the Rat, might
opt for the second half
of the paragraph.
I’ll simply concede
that I, very well, could
have a head
carved of very hard wood
but, in my defense,
I have a heart to melt
a Zodiac Rat’s resistance.

He wondered about all the talk of
monotheistic religions and if they
worship the same God with voices
crying, “No, no, no,”
and others, “Yes, yes, yes,”
and some, “I guess,”
and others,
“What a mess.”
Like the telephone game — a
circle of people, one phrase,
whispered from one to the next.
If you think by the end,
the phrase might be
lost to eternity, just think about
two more circles and what might
be spoken around the
bend
not to mention
at the end —
three phrases completely different
from the original and completely
different from the next.
How would we ever know what
phrase is best?
There is no good, better or best
or false or true,
just diverging views
from the rest.
We’ve all been given some clues.
We’re starting at the
wrong end, but as we
can’t start without
all that history;
the beginning remains
a mystery of history
which we all just call
the Eternal Mystery
of unconditional love.
So, perhaps the three
monotheistic religions
should keep a keen eye
on the clues
and offer each other
a bite of humble pie.

He thinks about the sweet loves of his life;
alongside him are the living and dead kin.
They come and go about the day with him.
Some have finally forgiven him the strife.

Some might say he dwells too much on guilt
and that such dwelling is a waste of time.
His loves say that each moment is just fine
to appreciate as life does swiftly wilt.

And so he breathes deeply of love’s sweet scent
embracing the moment as heaven-sent.

Thank God, we are not
Germany, the most
sophisticated, educated

nation in the world
in the 1920’s, 30’s and
40’s.

Thank God, we did not
lose the first world war
like Germany did.

Thank God, our economy
is not what Germany’s
was.

Or else…all the demagog-
uery might have
amounted to

something, but, perhaps
purely by circumstance
that will not

be this time
and the best
of who we are

will shine just fine
this election time,
we hope.

Cartoon on the wall in the study
of a ministerial buddy:
The pastor stands
on one side of the casket
at the grave site,
mourners on the other.
He says wryly,
“But seriously now.”

Deep, deep, deep in the caves
of an island in the Caribbean
sleep thousands upon thousands
of bats, bat droppings covering
the floor knee-deep for miles.
Former mosquitoes, the droppings
offer what appear to be caviar
for giant roaches, Palmetto Bugs,
as they say euphemistically in
Florida, the bugs grinding the
the mosquitoes further into fer-
tilizer. Now, that might not
seem very appetizing and some
might pull back in disgust just
imagining such a scene, but
think of it this way: those bats
could be helping to avoid a pan-
demic. Mosquitoes don’t strike
one as disgusting, just bother-
some, but somewhere along the
way they went astray on the
journey east of Eden from some
original purpose and now could
put a big dent in modern civilize-
ation. So, the bats and droppings
and giant roaches aren’t so bad
after all even if you would rather
not wade through the cave.

“For a forester, this tree is ugly, because it is crooked, which means you can’t get very much money for the wood,” he said. “It really surprised me, walking through the forest, when people called a tree like this one beautiful. They said, ‘My life hasn’t always run in a straight line, either.’ And I began to see things with new eyes.”
— Peter Wohlleben

Yahweh, Yahweh, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and abounding in faithfulness. For the thousandth generation, Yahweh maintains…kindness, forgiving all our faults, transgressions, and sins. –Exodus 34:6-7 — Scripture used in a meditation by Richard Rohr.

They make room for each other,
courtesy, but more, care, so that the
sun may bathe the leaves, branches,
trunks, and the whole chemical re-
vitalization goes from the top to the
bottom to the roots and the roots
drink deeply of the moisture sending
it all the way back to the top. The
trees, the forester said, love each
other, give birth and nurture. There
was a crooked trunk and a forester
seeing only the commercial value said
it was no good, but tree huggers and
lovers just looked on in amazement at
how beautiful the tree was and the
tree’s mother and father, of course,
loved the tree thoroughly. Someone
looking on quipped that her life
wasn’t so straight either. The
Israelites never ran very straight
except to run into trouble, but the
steadfastly loving parent of the
tribe looked on, mercifully gave them
a little room so that the sun of
compassion could shine on them warming
them from the tops of their heads to
the bottom of their soles and souls.
It would seem that for trees and tribes
love is at the root and the top of it
all.

The man is in a thankful mood this morning. He just looks around and observes what he does when he first gets out of bed.

One of the things for which the man is not thankful is the dog because the dog beckons to him to get up and take him out so the dog can do his business.

The man does and he watches the dog pee on a fallen palm frond, pee running off into the ground.

The man is off to the dumpster, dog in tow to drop off a bag of items to be recycled. On the way, the dog stops, tugs on the leash, crouches on his haunches and takes a dump on the grass on the edge of the drive way circling a fountain which greets drivers as they enter the condo association.

A car passes as the man bends over to pick up the poop in a poop bag which he then will deposit in the dumpster designated for garbage.

And so, the man thinks about things for which he is thankful as he thinks about peeing and pooping and scooping in the great out-of-doors.

He puts himself in the dog’s place except that he can let himself out. He thinks about leaving the condo by himself and peeing on the palm frond and watching it run off into the grass, of pooping on the lawn next to the driveway, of a car passing as he is crouched on his haunches and of him waving at the driver, of wiping himself and of picking up his poop and putting the toilet paper in the poop bag with his poop, all to be tossed in the dumpster.

And so this morning, he is thankful for simple things that he takes for granted several times a day. He is thankful for Sir John Harington who got the whole toilet and waste removal thing going during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and John Crapper who kept it moving a couple hundred years later.

He is thankful for modern plumbing, sewage disposal and water treatment plants and soap — of course, soap, one of the greatest discoveries in medical history and last but not least — bathroom doors.

And when he is in the great out-of-doors on a backpacking trip the man is thankful for trowels and biodegradable toilet paper and trees behind which to crouch with only his faithful dog to watch him as turn around is only fair play in some cases.

He asked himself why he
writes and blogs and copies
his poems from his blog and
saves them in a folder to be
printed sometime later, maybe,
and publishes — one book of
musings, vignettes and poetry
out there and another on the
way. He could say it is be-
cause he loves words and
stringing them together and
that would be true. He could
say he hopes he has something
to say that might be worth
someone else’s time to read,
and that would be true, too,
and it does happen that his
words are read and sometimes
he hears about it and that
fills him with gratitude. He
knows his spoken words are
not so significant as to be
written down by others as in
the case of Jesus or Lao Tzu
or the Buddha or Socrates.
His words might not be as
significant as what he heard
yesterday as he passed by the
community spa. It’s because
he wants to leave something
behind other than fading
memories, like Kilroy etching
on the inside of an outhouse
door somewhere in France dur-
ing WWII.