The Birds & The Bees, The Squirrels & The Seas
In the Middle East, people continue their age-old practice of killing each other off; others tried to knock down ten airliners; a suitcase bomb could make a city uninhabitable; suicide bombers wipe out anything they want.
Friend of mine said she walked by a rabbit on campus last night. It sort of twitched its nose, looked back at her and hopped a couple of feet away. The birds are doing whatever birds do in mid-August, and the tides come in and out at the seashore. They are unaware of terrorism. The fact that a lowered murder rate is good news is lost on them.
They've got a good thing going. When I walked along the shore, or looked at it from the deck of a ship, I envied its everlasting being. Kill, bomb, terrorize and it still rises and falls daily, the waves still grow during a storm and calm with the soft southwest breeze in the evening.
The birds and the bees, the squirrels and the seas may not have compiled encyclopedias, built cars, invented television or devised worship services. But they also do not feel compelled to kill themselves as they run into funeral processions; they may protect their territory, but not by killing people they do not know who pose no threat to them.
They pretty much practice the tenets of the world's religions. Maybe not all their silly little rules, but the essentials. That's not bad; we could learn much from them.
There's nothing wrong with writing books, exploring space, inventing Silly Putty or keeping up a blog. But God's simpler creatures seem to take things at face value and not find ways to use them to harm others.
Friend of mine said she walked by a rabbit on campus last night. It sort of twitched its nose, looked back at her and hopped a couple of feet away. The birds are doing whatever birds do in mid-August, and the tides come in and out at the seashore. They are unaware of terrorism. The fact that a lowered murder rate is good news is lost on them.
They've got a good thing going. When I walked along the shore, or looked at it from the deck of a ship, I envied its everlasting being. Kill, bomb, terrorize and it still rises and falls daily, the waves still grow during a storm and calm with the soft southwest breeze in the evening.
The birds and the bees, the squirrels and the seas may not have compiled encyclopedias, built cars, invented television or devised worship services. But they also do not feel compelled to kill themselves as they run into funeral processions; they may protect their territory, but not by killing people they do not know who pose no threat to them.
They pretty much practice the tenets of the world's religions. Maybe not all their silly little rules, but the essentials. That's not bad; we could learn much from them.
There's nothing wrong with writing books, exploring space, inventing Silly Putty or keeping up a blog. But God's simpler creatures seem to take things at face value and not find ways to use them to harm others.
posted by Tom Carten at 11:40 AM
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