Babel gracias

HEY YOU!! YEAH YOU!!
Shush, I'm busy.
Aren't you thankful for ANYTHING this week?
S'pose so.
Like WHAT?
I'on't know
Humph! See if I bless YOU again.
Awright, awright, fine. Here's your list.

DIO
Signora
Bambini
Casa
Vivanda
Chiesa
Amici
Risata

Can I go now?
That wasn't Spanish.
No, Italiano. Gratitude is better in Italian.
You remember what happened at the Tower of Babel?
e9 8 43m3g34 2hq5 yq003n3e? or d97i4 j wi!
See. Don't mess with my languages.

Si, Signore.

Corona & Lime

Never mind the latest addition to my Groovin' list, this is definitely NOT the scene at the end of my afternoon on the patio of the local pub. Do I wish it was? Not tellin.

Jueves Gracias

Doggedly he turns his back on the circling horde bent on his destruction. He pulls from the inside of his ragged tunic a chunk of charcoal, and a roll of papyrus. He scratches earnestly:

I.
AM.
GRATEFUL.
For?

* More gloriously sunny days this summer than I can shake a stick at, whatever that means. I'll ask my Dad, next life.

* A pastor who realizes some of us might have given up on prayer. And he helps us understand...

* ...HIM. He wants to be friends. He wants to listen. He wants to talk.

* Six writer friends who pull me from despondency simply by sitting around being goofy and creative. And an ink-smudged salute to Annie, for being there, and being Annie.

* Us. The U.S. of A. We consider for our leader a strangely named black guy, an geezerly military jock, a screechy white woman and a Baptist rock & roll preacher. Are we cool or what?

* Coblentz chocolate covered pretzels. Makes 3pm almost fun.

* Lunar glory. It goes in circles reflecting light, and always manages to look amazing. And intriguing, like it's hiding something. Oh yeah, its back side.

* Gratitude. It turns your face to the sun.


His charcoal down to a pebble, he rolls the scroll and tucks it away. He turns to confront the horde, only to realize, the lot of them fled.

The Core Problem

I have a confession to make. I throw apple cores out the truck window, into the ditch by the side of the road.

But I am emphatically not a "litterbug" as they used to say in the 60s. I am almost anal about not littering. You know the little paper wads you get when you take one Breathsaver out of the roll? I do not toss that on the sidewalk.

But somewhere along the line I decided that an apple core would decompose quickly, so it was okay to pitch. Not a banana peel - too big, too messy. Not fast food waste. But an apple core, sure. With a modicum of guilt. And not if anyone is watching. Hmmm.

Now, none of us is gonna dump a bag of rotten apples by the side of the road. But nobody will complain if I spit an apple seed out the window. One's definitely okay. The other is definitely out.

But where do you draw the line? Where falls the apple core?

Even more, there's "core" issues in my life that I never really decided where to draw the line, I just do what I do.

* When I download content, is it stealing, or is it just taking what's out there?
* When I pass along "news" about a friend, is it conversation, or is it gossip?
* When I overlook a wrong, am I choosing my battles, or avoiding confrontation?

That's just things I've run into this week. The extremes are black and white, the big space in the middle is shades of gray.

So I'm back to the question I asked myself about the apple core: What if everybody did it the way I do?

Call Me Cap'n Hook

One 20' board is what I did for church on Sunday.

Sunday was Community Service day at New Pointe Community Church. It was a day for us not to go to church, but to be the church. Instead of buzzing around the hive making honey, we swarmed the countryside spreading love.

We delivered more than 1500 boxes of food to local pantries. At the church we offered a health fair, free hair care, car servicing. In surrounding towns we cleaned up roadsides, painted buildings inside and out, did home repairs. Early reports had over 1000 people involved.

My contribution? One 20' board, carefully placed, securely screwed fast, neatly painted, ready for hooks to hold clothes and towels outside a row of showers at Sky View Ranch.

Now that does not include the hour I spent attempting to fasten vinyl cove base to glass board with glue that stuck like oil to water. And the time I spent as a helping hand to the most skilled and efficient contractor/carpenter I have ever seen, my friend Paul Marner. I even got some dirt in my nails cleaning up landscaping trash.

But in the end, I looked at a 20' board as my accomplishment. It's not much, until you realize there were 1000+ people just like me, doing their own version of a 20' board.

Which means in one Sunday morning the NPCC volunteers could put up a 4 mile long coat hook board. Pretty cool if you need room for 20,000 coats. Next Christmas 3000 of us could bring our six closest friends to church and have room for all our Harley Davidson leather, Lands End, LLBean, or thrift store rescues.

What's better is when you have a church that cares enough about the people around them to find out what they really need, and finding a way to fill the need.

That's the church being the church. One coat hook at a time.