"Elmer Fudd.................."

”If you believe nothing is always what's left after a while, as I did; If you believe you have this collection of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here behind the silence and the averted eyes); If you believe an afternoon can collapse into strange privacies - how in your backyard, for example, the shyness of flowers can be suddenly overwhelming, and in the distance you can hear, clearly, the explosion of thunder, personal, like a voice; If you believe there's no correct response to death, as I do, that even in grief (where I've sat making plans) there are small corners of joy; If your body sometimes is a light switch in a house of insomniacs; If you can feel yourself straining just to be yourself every waking minute; If you are, as I am, you are almost smiling” - Stephen Dunn, via “Whiskey River”

My wife, even after fifty years, fails to understand my continual capacity to “live in my mind”, my tendency to always be “somewhere else” in my thoughts regardless of what else is going on around me. Isolation for seven years in my childhood battling Rheumatic Fever might have something to do with it. No television in the early days. No other kids, my two siblings not restricted in spending their whole day with me. Imagination and comic books fueled my existence. Reality was just an anchorage to return to when the moment required it. Such existence didn’t evolve me into a serial killer, but did produce this inner guy who is always exploring the mystery. My wheels are always turning. During Wednesday’s unexpected sermon, for example, while the preacher was delivering admonishment for God’s people to never forget the source of all we possess in Him, my own thoughts were chasing a rabbit elsewhere. My Bible has numerical annotations that lead to the Hebrew or Greek root giving birth to the King James translation; and, in following one of Steve’s references, I discovered the word “mind”, while utilized several times in that portion of Scripture, did not always give indication of the same exact root being there in the original text. Interesting. To me, anyway. History clearly reveals that the early Church, though born-again in Christ, yet struggled with its humanity. The Apostle Paul’s epistles give evidence of “dissention among the troops” in so far as understanding the Gospel. For several centuries, beyond the Gnostics claiming their own “spiritual enlightenment” to be the truth of the matter, the Catholic bunch on the other side were split into our different “kingdoms”, each with its own pope, its own teachings, its own demands. If, from there, we’ve “progressed” into our current menu offering a conglomeration of doctrinal dogmas all emerging from the same Book, pardon me if, while seeking no confrontation with any of them, while recognizing my own membership within the species, at large, I prefer to follow His tug on my anchor-line along with those like-minded few who seem to be similarly inclined. Be verwy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits…….