DISCUSS YOUR VIEW OF AMERICA…

                OK. So, here it goes:

Today I was listening to how water works…the molecules, I mean, the polarity and so on:

                2 hydrogen (oxidation 1)

                1 oxygen (oxidation -2)

And these were the rules, all of this and more, except when…And that’s when they lost me. Well, from what I can remember, I guess it was the covalent type:

                Two gases; no metals; anions;

                2 lone pairs (AX₂E₂ = bent)

                (Yes, bent)

I don’t know what it means either, but I know what I am told.

H₂O

75% of my body. Drink, they say; you will die without it. And don’t you waste a drop! because others are dying from lack of clean drinking water all around the world.

So, anyway, there it is. America.

I always knew I was going to college. The American dream. What would I do without my degree?

                Not in America!

And then the job, the desk, the suit, the briefcase, tie, yes, I’d need to learn how to tie a tie, too…(so unimportant)…and, what else?…the papers, yes, all the paperwork I will have to do (and the trees the unlearned people will have to cut down so that I can have my paper), and the windows, one or two where I can look out on occasion and listen to America sing, the cars and such and horns and cells and the cabbies’ voices to the drunkards.

Yep, so that’s why I am learning the way water works. So are they, the rest of them in my class. I look at them and at the table where I notice the water has spilled a rainbow, rainbow, rainbow.

 

I guess I should write about all the other views of America now. Others could say it better than I (I’m sure they have), but here it goes. Some take a very optimistic view of America. Everyone is special in what they do and they can all sing this, the American song. A sense of optimism can be nice, and necessary. And of course, in our own right, we all try to agree for sanities sake. Optimism allows us to think of the world in a very simplistic manner. Indeed, the world is simple: We are all humans, greater than our nature will allow, ignoring the finer, simpler things in life. And where have all the flowers gone, anyway? The birds and the stars?

                Then others have this view that America is out to get them—if by them, they also mean all minorities. In some sense we are all becoming minorities faster than the next minority; if you look at it that way, all of us, all of these—individuals. This said everyone is generally hopeful that at some point America (not to mention the world) will be ONE. It seems sometimes America forgets it is a mingled country and everyone is a part of everyone else. All people in this world are just trying to get where they are going as quickly as possible; the problem is that they don’t really know where they are going most of the time. But if we give one person the opportunity to take another by the hand and save them from the suffering that their country has allowed, cannot we then join this country they have founded? For if you will, please, define country for me.

                Yet another view…we move at such a pace, love has been forgotten in the time…There is no luxury in life but ignorance of the news of the world; for the world is a hopeless place. But I write you now, outside, in the smell of spring and stars…in the hope of a new day…a new sun tomorrow…

 

In the end, I always dreamed I was set in the water by a defiant mother and found by another

because I am not

of color                 star or                   stripe

I am

of God.

A COMMUNITY OF SCAVENGERS

‘Two pieces of trash!’ said that 2nd grade teacher. You see, the rule was that we each had to have two pieces of trash to throw away before we could leave the classroom at the end of the day. Sometimes the easiest way to go about it was to make the two pieces of trash ourselves with notebook paper or whatever was handy. Of course, I always ended up searching the ground like we were supposed to, and here I am today doing the same thing in the park before I leave. It used to make such a big difference, too, in the classroom. But I haven’t noticed much difference out here.

They say nature is a pretty big thing—a big responsibility, that is. This and that and all these things we have to do to take care of it. But this is not why I pick up two pieces of trash every time I am out. They say for any man the easiest way to tell if he is living a life of loving God is if he is living a life of loving others. What does this mean? Well, honestly, I am not sure yet. First, I have to wonder, what is love? I remember Jesus said:

‘For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in.’

Perhaps, this is love.

But then I passed a family on the street today that looked hungry and cold, and I could not feed them, and I could not clothe them. And I was thinking, or at least hoping, this doesn’t make me loveless, does it? But I did pick up two pieces of trash. That I could do. I have heard of all these places around the world, these trash sites where people—men, women, and children—wade knee deep for meals or any scraps of recyclables so that they can make a living. I try to remember them when I am picking up my two pieces of trash. I figure it can’t hurt to pray for them a little. It is never enough though. I was thinking about feeding them and clothing them and giving them a home, too, all of them. And then I was thinking about going to work and taking my dog for a walk. I was thinking something like, this is my home, and that is theirs. And I was thinking I am still going on pretty much undisturbed.

So, in taking my dog for that walk, I saw a stray. I offered him food. He did not take it, though he looked hungry. I offered him a home. He did not take it, though he looked cold. He must have seen me the other day, walking past that cold and hungry family. He must have known I was going on pretty much undisturbed. I left the food on the ground. I didn’t wait around to make sure he ate it and not some critter lingering in the shadows.

When I was having another meal alone that night, I thought of him. I had this image in my head of some big round table where men, women, and children from all walks of life had come together to sit down side by side; and there was no judgment or discrimination; there were just people, just a meal shared together. Even the stray wanted more than what I had offered him.

I wrote him a letter the other day. I guess he can’t read it, but I wanted to write it anyway. Maybe a letter isn’t much, but it is what I had to offer. I left it on the ground for him. Yesterday, I picked it up and threw it away as one of my two pieces of trash. He is a little less of a stranger now, that stray. He walks with me and eats with me. I don’t think it was the letter though. I think it was when he saw me pick up the letter and throw it away. So, that is it. That is why I pick up two pieces of trash and throw them away everywhere I go.

It is so simple, really. Love.

A FISH WITH BIG EYES AND A BIG TAIL AND A BIG HEART

‘I like fish,’ he told me once. I suppose it seemed strange to me, him saying that out of nowhere in the middle of the desert of my dream. I asked him, ‘Why?’ And he answered me, ‘I like the ones with real big eyes because they can see further than I can; and the ones with real big tails because they can swim further than I can; and the ones with real big hearts because they can love further than I can.’ I guess I was expecting him to say something more like, where there are fish, there’s water. Now that would have made more sense. Especially because he died from thirst only a short while later. He was still talking about fish when he died with a big smile spread across his face. And that’s when I noticed that I was a fish. Then I woke up in a little fish bowl that didn’t nearly fit my size. I jumped out and tried to flip and flop to the ocean. But somewhere along the way, I forgot what that man had said about the fish with big eyes and tails and hearts, and I turned back into a regular old human.

The next time I saw the man who had died in the desert in my dream, he was in a lake and dying from too much water. I said, ‘I forgot what you said about the fish.’ A big smile spread across his face. Bubbles rose and disappeared from his lips and when I heard him again, I heard: ‘I like fish. All fish, somewhere along the way, meet blind men and give them their eyes; and they meet men who can’t swim and give them their tails. And their hearts, well, they give them away too, somewhere along the way.’

WHAT HAPPENS TO A LEAF

There are so many leafs, I know I will never be lonely. There are red ones and purple ones, yellow and orange and green; and I love them all. Fall is my favorite season, when the wind blows and the leaves clap together and then fly away. I try my best to catch them when they fall. In every way I am like a leaf, only a small piece of a body—the tree. Sometimes I hardly notice the tree, or even the branch, too concerned with the wind and how it makes me sway back and forth. The wind is a frightening thing to a leaf, especially in fall. Fall: when all the leaves change their colors, and I do too. Sometimes I start off green, and turn yellow; sometimes I start off yellow, and turn green. I always turn brown, eventually. That is the life of a leaf. Fall always surprises me in that way. One day everything is so beautiful and colorful, and the next things are as barren as a winter wonderland. And I am on the ground, giving my nutrients to the soil for next year’s leaves. Of course, if I hung on just long enough, and bided my time, and let go in the perfect gust of wind, I could be soaring for quite some time before that happens. That is what I plan to do: soar. Learn how and know when the best time is to just let go, and let go. Otherwise I will be another dead and lonely leaf clapping in the winter breeze. I realize now, when I let go, I may let go alone, and how lonely it will be. But I am not so concerned about the loneliness; no, not for me. I have been on my own blackened bough far too long to be fearful of the soaring. But I will miss, miss dearly, those leaves I leave behind. Now I know I will see other leaves along the way; I will see other trees and other seasons and other falls; every fall I will see new, but nothing to replace the leaves I have loved along the way. Oh, and how delicately I hang on now to that tree, by a spider’s thread. And when my breeze comes and blows me far away, there is only one thing that will continue to vex me: if I am only a piece of a body, and that piece is the heart, what happens if I break along the way?

THE CONCEPT OF HITTING A BALL BACK AND FORTH

He was swimming around them in smaller and smaller circles. It took him a while just to ask. ‘Can I play?’ he finally said. The next thing I knew the boy and the girl and her father were all playing with the beach ball, hitting it back and forth. It was such a simple thing, really: one boy a little less lonely for an hour or two. It seemed strange to me how happy I was to watch that silly game. And if it could make me smile like it did, I know God must have been smiling down with so much more joy in his heart. Soon it was just the boy and the girl playing together. She looked a bit older than him, but all they really needed to be able to do was hit a ball back and forth, after all. They must have played together for hours. And you know, they couldn’t really hit the ball back and forth to each other. A part of me was thinking, ‘My Lord, that would get tiring…hours of hitting a ball back and forth and swimming for it, racing for it, all over the place.’ Maybe the concept is lost on some people, the ones of us who are fully grown. But then I remembered what it was like to be a child, when such simple words as, ‘Can I play,’ meant so much more. And I was watching them, the lonely boy and the girl swim for the same beach ball time and again, and I was smiling like I did when I was a boy, playing; when I imagined I would be able to play forever. But I must have looked away, because suddenly the boy and the girl were gone. Maybe God looked away, too.

UPSIDE-DOWN MONKEY

There was a monkey who always hung upside-down. And not only that, but he walked upside-down, ate upside-down, and did just about everything upside-down. One day a man approached him and asked him why he did everything upside-down. And the monkey answered him, ‘Because I am a man.’ ‘No, you are a monkey,’ said the man. And the monkey stood up very straight on his front paws and the wide parts of his eyes glared down the man. ‘Well, Good Sir, you are blind then, because as anyone can tell, I am a man.’ The man sighed and he said, ‘Look, even if you are not a monkey, you are not a man…Why, what man do you see who walks around upside-down all day?’ The monkey stood on one paw and then the other, as if he was testing his footing. ‘How do you know that I am not right-side-up, and you are not the one who is upside-down?’ asked the monkey. And so the man did the very same thing as the monkey: he stood on one foot and then the other; and then he said, ‘Well, I suppose I don’t.’ ‘And that is why I say, I am a man,’ said the monkey; ‘because I have feet and I have hands, and truly, I could walk on either, or on all fours; I have eyes I could use for looking, or seeing; I have ears I could use for hearing, or listening; I have a mouth I could use for talking, or speaking; and I have a heart I could use for living, or loving.’ Then the man suddenly felt the enormous weight of his body, and in no time at all he ended up upside-down, walking on his hands; his eyes were square with the monkey. ‘What do you think you will do?’ asked that upside-down man. ‘First, figure out if I am right-side-up, or upside-down,’ answered the monkey. ‘And then?’ The monkey started to walk ahead. ‘Who knows…live, I suppose. No,’ the monkey said, ‘I think, I will love.’ ‘Ah, then we know you are not a man, after all,’ said the man. And as that monkey walked away, he said, ‘How do you know that I am not a man, and men are not the ones who are something else altogether?’ ‘Like what?’ shouted the man as the monkey disappeared in the distance. ‘I don’t know,’ answered the monkey. ‘Look in your heart and figure out who you are.’

One day the man ran into the monkey again, and they were both walking upside-down compared to everyone else. So the monkey asked the man why he did everything upside-down. And the man answered him, ‘Because I am a man.’ ‘No, you are a monkey,’ said the monkey; ‘for what man do you see who loves with all his heart instead of living for himself?’ ‘Ah, but you see, I am living,’ the man said. ‘Precisely,’ answered the monkey. ‘What do you think you will do now?’ the man said. ‘Everything. Nothing,’ answered the monkey. ‘And you?’ ‘Oh, I was thinking I would see if anyone else was tired of walking on their feet,’ the man said, and then he walked ahead and disappeared in the distance.

PAPERMOON

‘I am going to make you a paper moon,’ he told her when they were children. She wasn’t very impressed when he gave it to her. But she kept it all those years. She kept it in her window, just a simple white piece of paper, about the size of her palm, cut into a circle, and not even a perfect circle at that. One day he finally asked her, ‘Do you like it?’ She said, ‘Sure, it is nice.’ She didn’t understand why he was so concerned about it. So many years had passed, after all. ‘It is one of a kind, and just for you,’ he told her. ‘What makes it so special?’ she asked him. ‘Well, if you make a wish, it will come true,’ he said. She still wasn’t very impressed. But that night, she looked over at that simple paper moon and she made a wish. She made a wish every night, and when she saw him again, she said, ‘How can it be? All my wishes have come true!’ He smiled at her and said, ‘A heart is a magical thing.’ But she couldn’t take his heart, and that night she took down the paper moon from her window and it tore into a million little pieces; and she couldn’t put it back together again. When she went solemnly to return it to him, he would not take it. He said, ‘It is just for you. If you keep it, it will be whole again.’ She said, ‘But I cannot keep your heart.’ And he smiled at her and said, ‘I would rather it be whole with you, then broken inside of me.’ So she took his heart home. At first she was wary of it and would not put it back in her window; but when she was fully convinced it was quite the harmless thing after all, only a modest little paper moon, she put it back in her window where it was finally whole again, too dim to keep her awake in the night and too bright to let in the monsters.

NOTHING GREATER IN HEAVEN AND EARTH

Birthdays are a funny thing. I don’t think I ever reached that age when I didn’t want to be at least one year older or younger. And when I was asked the other day how old I thought I was, not how old I am, but how old I thought I was, I answered: ‘One moment.’ And they all thought I was not going to answer. Of course, that was my answer. Not an age, not a date, not any insignificant number that changes year to year, day to day, but a distinct moment in time. Like they say of God being upon one shoulder and the devil upon another—one of those moments. And here I stand, here with God’s hand upon my shoulder gently leading me not to simply stand, but to move. While here I stand more prone to sit when things look foggy and dark ahead, when the winding road looks rather more difficult than I would prefer, anyway. But I guess it takes walking into a hurricane to feel the rain on your skin; it takes walking on water to see the fish swim beneath your feet; it takes walking that road to see flowers take flight. And it takes being just a moment in time to truly live. For a hurricane too is just a moment in time. But just one can change the whole world.

Oh, and one more thing, one very important thing: when I walk into that hurricane, standing tall with God upon my shoulder, I know there is nothing greater in Heaven and Earth than those who will be there to help me when a tree falls on my head.

MORNING STORM

The alligator in my windowsill is drinking the rain from the morning storm. He would just as soon let me drown in the nighttime storms, but he is not so much the monster he is at night in the daytime; he is merciful in the daytime and drinks the rainwater. Then again, he is probably thirsty anyway from hiding under children’s beds all night and nipping at their feet when they try to jump over him after turning out the lights. I always check to make sure he doesn’t look any more plump when he returns to my windowsill. I won’t have him eating any children, after all, not even a foot; not even a toe. Although I do feel bad for him sometimes. What will he eat? I would give him some of my own food, but I don’t have any to give. You see, he took my legs and arms a long time ago when he was the monster under my bed; anything that was hanging over and out of the safety of under the blanket, he snatched up with those rotten old teeth. So I have been in this bed all these years because of that terrible monster. But when I grew up and he started to visit me in the daytime, my only visitor, I realized he is not so much the monster he is at night, and I thought it would be nice to have a friend.

MADHATTER

There was a man who liked to drink tea. And most every day he had with him a cup of tea. He would hardly sip and he would hardly ever drink. It was mostly for the companionship, I suppose. And when people came to him and asked, what reason had this cup of tea in his hand, he simply answered, ‘What reason have you to ask?’ Now, for those who asked for a sip, he went on to say, ‘Indeed, wouldn’t we all like a sip.’ And for those who asked with a please, he said, ‘A very merry un-birthday, to you! To who? To me! To you? A very merry un-birthday, to you! To me! To you!’ And for those who stayed around even still, he offered them a drink, and said, ‘May we share our love with all those who love; our tea with all those who drink of tea.’ There was a man who liked to drink tea. And most everyday he had with him a cup of tea. And it was never empty.