Today I spent my time at the Park watching the plentiful rainfall. Watching rain is one of my favorite pastimes. I find it uplifting and peaceful and calming. It is a bit like life…not every day is sunny without a cloud in the sky. I was set to water my outdoor plants this morning but the happy rain did it for me. Rain slows us down and causes us to reflect on where we are and where we have been.

June is moving right along. I visited the dentist yesterday and the friendly lady at the front said that I was just there yesterday…to which I replied that I had been at her office a week ago. I did however understand how she thought that my most recent visit had been yesterday as that is how fast time goes by. A week seems like a day and a month seems like a week and…well you get the picture…

I visited the Visitors Center at Giant City yesterday and they had the most delightful stuffed wild animals. I wondered why I had not visited earlier.

Aaron and I were commiserating the last evening about our seemingly changing world. I confessed that I had believed myself to be an empathetic person with a modicum of insight and intuitive curiosity…and yet I had discovered that now that I am an old guy I really did not know much about the struggles that each of us endure.

We want to paint our surroundings with a narrow brush and sure and certain brush strokes when in reality we need a humongous brush and halting brush strokes as we reach out to our fellow humans. I have always heard that we should judge not lest we be judged. Or as Neva J. told me that the only certainty is death and taxes.

Kaleidoscopes are wonderful and enlightening instruments of light and color. We peer through our built-in kaleidoscope and assume everyone sees what we see. In reality, everyone sees something different. Snowflake is not an insult…we are as diverse as snowflakes.

I can not legislate who you are and you can legislate who I am. I have no idea what it is like to be you. You may look at me and say how did he come to be. My primary Christian and Faith concern for many years has been how do we treat each other. Not the narrow religious doctrine that some hold fast to. The poorest of us can feel elite when we ascribe to excluding others who do not match our template for holiness.

Fear drives much of religious thought. Or as the saying goes, ‘I would rather be excluded for those who I include than included for those I exclude…’