Today started with sunshine, what I call a Lily day, but there are clouds in the distance. Rainy, cloudy days are Rick days. One reason I belong in Portland is because I love the rain. Maybe someday I'll find my general store in the mountains, trees and snow, but for right now, Portland is the best place we've ever lived.
This morning's Oregonian is the usual fare of our inhumanity to one another. Can we watch the news or read the paper without learning how someone hurt or killed someone else, how this person or that organization plundered the other, how so and so made millions on this deal, that movie, that sale? Meanwhile most of the world struggles to survive. Those who 'have' try to get more because they are afraid they will lose what they have. Those on the margins of life struggle to move toward the middle. Do you think more and more people are wondering if the idea of the American dream applies only to the few?
Last night Lily watched a documentary on New York. The Wall Street of the 19th century was pretty much the same as today; same motivation, same agendas. The names and methods have changed, but everything else is the same.
If we believe what we're told our days are numbered; global warming or global greed will soon swallow us. Don't more and more people say we are only pond scum anyway, you know, the sum of all the fears we try to stay ahead of.
Life is a comedy to those who touch and a tragedy to those who feel so are distractions a good thing? Do we seek too much comfort in that which is familiar? The Portland Trailblazers traded Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw to the LA Clippers last week. I know my friend John is upset. He loved Outlaw. Lily and I are upset too. Yes, Canby certainly seems to be giving our Blazers what they need, but we miss Steve and Travis. We enjoy the distraction of basketball, after all, aren't we are a country whose economy is based on providing distractions?
Will we ever change? We are drawn to the seeming safety of the familiar and our distractions can be a welcome relief from the stress of daily life. If we don't change maybe the things we are most familiar with will change. Why does pond scum need to be distracted anyway? Are we trying to replace Someone with something?
Paul Tillich said, "The decisive event which underlies the search for meaning and the despair of it in the 20th century is the loss of God in the 19th century."
I guess the more things change with a small 't' the more things with a big 'T' stay the same.
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