First Day - No Pictures YET!

Marsha is sawing logs and I am watching Aljazeera Television...English version.  We are faced with a choice... Deal with the differences, or crawl back in our caves.  They reported on a US senator that will be sworn in on the Koran.   I understand bigotry.  I understand hatred.  I understand clinging to the things that we know!  But it doesn't work.  The stakes are too great!

Ya see... They just did a story on soccer teams and the importance of a game that is being played somewhere.   I do not know the game or the importance of that match.  I understand the passion that goes into sporting events. It is the simple tale of living from day to day.  I watched a young French family on the flight to Paris.  In any other reality ...he might have been one of my my sons-in-law.  He was caring for his son on so many levels.  Diapers, medications for the cough, walking him up and down the aisle.  It appeared that the parents were teachers in the States.  It appeared that they love their son.  I could not figure out if Jesus was important to them.  I never heard whether they cared about Geo. W. Bush's agenda in Iraq.  I saw that they arranged their "being" around this 15 month old son, and were grading term papers on "Post Modernism" according to the baby's needs.  As I have said in the past, if we take the time to climb out of the sand box and share a see-saw we just might have a chance.  Whatever name we speak when we seek a stronger power than ourselves, we admit our flaws and weaknesses.  Whatever book we lay our hands on when we swear that our word is our bond, that there is no higher truth than the words we swear on our hearts and souls...we define our being.

And then there were the boys in "camo" in the airport.  Detroit Metro - Wayne County, Michigan.   Near Dearborn.  A "sanitation engineer" saluted two young men in uniform as they walked past her.  They were Shocked and Awed. They said that they had never seen this.  They are not officers.  But lady with the mop respected their faith and dedication to something grander than themselves.  And I stood and prayed that we would get a leader worthy of these two young men, trying to get home for the holidays, that would lead them in the path of compassion and wisdom that they deserve. God or Allah forbid that they kill or die to save the "face" of an old white man that is my age and cares little for the roots of despair.

Grant them a few days in the bosom of their family.  Grant them the confusion of having to deal with walking a 15 month old son, with a cough, up and down the aisle of an airplane, 30,000 feet in the air, and make that their heaviest burden.  Lift the lies off their shoulders and show them that every man that walks the earth, Christian, Moslem and atheist, has the same simple worries.  When will I get laid, and what are the consequences?  Can I keep my word?  My Bond?