Except for the lunatic fringe base
the rest of the country sees
all this as a great waste.

It’s time to get on with the
things that make for meaning,
a sense of purpose, a good feeling.

Why are there so many articles on
how to live a happy life without
constant strife?

We are rattled to the bone
and the pros tell us not to
go it all alone.

Get out in nature, meditate,
exercise the compassion
nerve running down your spine.

Have faith that all will be fine.

“And all shall be well; all manner
of things shall be well.” Julian
stated.

Don’t indulge that which you’ve hated.

Take it all in.
Acknowledge it all,
and breathe it out again.

Here’s mud in your eye.
It’s time to celebrate.
Bye, bye.

It’s time to stand strong
and feel good that you stand against
all that is wrong.

Join hands, join hearts,
put your heads together
and know, as a country,

we can all do better.

Six of seven stand strong,
erect, lifting new shoots to
the sky.
Only one cries a goodbye.
Only one withers,
goes from green to brown,
dropping needles to the ground.
Day after day
the tree goes away.
Sometime soon,
some noon, afternoon
it will have given up
the bloom.
To the other six, deep green,
I only glance.
The dying tree begs
to be seen.
I watch as if in a trance
the passing of the green
praying, hoping
for a new bud
to be seen.
The tree is dry.
It utters but a whimper of a cry.
In it’s veins, there is no juice.
I pray a good journey
to eternity
for the young and tender
spruce.

This chief is quite vainglorious,
and the way he fires others
is quite indecorous
and seemingly filled with cowardice.
He tweets the news
and the fired, of course, can’t refuse.
He is a scaredy-cat bully
who acts willy-nilly.
He can’t stand face to face
and is dearth of any grace.
He postures being a leader so fearless
who is only good at causing massive distress.
The sooner he is off to jail
the sooner we will have someone else to hail.

he just came across
the word “quotidian”
again.
is someone a
message
trying to send?
it seems to happen
every day —
“it’s becoming
quotidian,”
someone will
say,
and then he
thought, it’s
more than
once
diurnal
that he
uses the
urinal,
but, given
his age,
that’s
okay.

the sun is fire.
sun’s rays shoot out from the ball.
we are like sun rays.

god is like the sun.
god’s creative rays shoot out.
we are god’s great rays.

*idea from a quote by Rabbi Rami Shapiro
in a meditation by Richard Rohr

It’s happening again. Occupational hazard,
I guess. Does the retired surgeon dream of

not having the right tools or if she has
them, they aren’t sharp enough to make a

clean incision? Some even show a bit of
rust? The body is coming out from under

the anesthetic and she has to hurry with
the cut, patch the hernia, sew him up and

get him to recovery. She grabs the rusty
scalpel, digs in and the screams begin.

Wow! And I just go into a panic and wake up
in a sweat when I can’t seem to find a Bible

and have to get into the pulpit without
proper preparation. Parishioners might get

up and walk out in disgust but, at least,
no one is going to die of sepsis.

He wonders if the vulgarity of
the comedians, the banality of
barbs, the rudeness of the

quips, the sheer meanness of
attacks intended to elicit big
guffaws reveal a shallowness

of experience, a dearth of
breadth and depth. Or maybe
they are all products of some

devastating personal trauma,
of abuse behind closed doors
in darkened rooms? But maybe

not. Maybe they are just the
shallow jokes of a shallow life.
Maybe, as the stand-up co-

medians of the Catskills knew,
that true suffering, great suffer-
ing, community suffering, a

people’s suffering, a collective
groan are fertile ground out of
which grows the best comedy

and the best joke, the great
joke, the self-effacing joke, not
the mean joke, but the earnest,

belly laugh joke is the proper
response to the tears and the
blood that water that soil —

the joke that helps them cope.

Every Sunday they sit in the pew
saying, “Voting for Trump was the Godly thing to do.
Every president has had his sin.
He’s a man of God; we voted for him.
To get Bathsheba, King David had Uriah killed
and still with God’s spirit, David was filled.
An Egyptian, Moses killed
and he, too, was spirit filled.
With staff in hand
he led the covenant people to the Holy Land.
Get with the program, y’all,
and listen intently to God’s urgent call.
Didn’t God use the heathen Cyrus
to free the Israelites from the Babylonian crisis?”
“We, God’s chosen white people,
need The Donald,” they cry from the steeple,
“to deliver us from black and brown people.”
They say, “And that’s the bottom line.
If America was all white, America would be just fine.”
But wait! My Christian brother and sister,
don’t cradle, coddle and fondle fear.
It’s not too late.
to banish hate.
Hate’s inevitable course results in violence
and if, as Jesus said, you
live by the sword, you’ll get your comeuppance.
Didn’t Jesus say, over and over, “Fear not”?
Throw off that fear; don’t be bewitched by Devilish rot.
Jesus loves the little children, all the children
of the world, red, yellow, black, brown, white.
They are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Before you tear the fragile fabric of this country anymore,
isn’t it time to end the Civil War?

The writer described all the (p)-resident’s fun
as a lesson in the deadly sins minus one.
Why, oh, why, did he leave out sloth?
Let’s just cozy up to the un-presidential trough.
Pride? From everything Trump — he does not hide.
Greed? Everything for money. It’s his only creed.
Lust? Speak of it again, we must? Dust to dust.
Envy? If for every time he knocks Obama, I had a penny.
Gluttony? A Big Mac in bed is the best company.
Wrath? Don’t cross the mob boss’ vindictive path.
Sloth? The dog ate his homework. Again? To the laziness of “lying” he pledges his troth.

*idea from an opinion piece in the Washington Post, August 24, 2018, by Colbert I. King.

The spiritual guide wrote, “We
sometimes have to live at least
a whole year before our hearts

have fully said good-bye and
the pain of our grief recedes.”
A whole year? What about

twenty-five years and his heart
has not yet fully said, “Good-
bye,” And he doesn’t think he

will ever say good-bye with
finality. The intensity of
grief’s pain has receded for

him but, every now and then,
an intense, acute, stabbing pain
to his heart reminds him of

love’s labors lost. His grief
has lasted as long as the word
honorificabilitudinitatibus,

the longest word in the English
language and, as such, perhaps
he is due some type of dubious

distinction. And then he turns
to his love and gives thanks
for love’s labors found.