A warm day for January 5th. It is supposed to be warm all week. The rhythms of life slowly return from their holiday break. Snow and ice are probably coming, but you can not tell it by today. MJ and I love the Billy Bob Thornton television series, Landman. In yesterday’s episode, the actor playing his Dad, Sam Elliott, fell into the swimming pool and was marooned until Billy Bob Thornton could help him out. Tommy Norris, the character name for Thornton, pays a stripper to give his Dad physical therapy because he states that his Dad can not say no to a beautiful woman. The stripper/physical therapist chose aqua therapy for Dad. She is seen holding him like a baby in the pool with a look of pure bliss on his face. As I have heard it said, getting old is not for sissies.

So we go forth into 2026, old and young. I saw another movie that intrigued me with Jim Gaffigan called Linoleum. His character, who is a television Mr. Science on a late-night cable TV station, insists that we each see the universe in our own way and that no two sightings are alike… a fingerprint of the universe, if you will. This resonated with me, as I have often wondered if we all perceive things in the same way. How could there be such a divergence of opinion if we are all receiving the same visual input? Are we in our own matrix, negotiating the Perils of Pauline on our own? What do the inhabitants of other planets see when they look at Earth?

Have you ever discovered what people perceive you to be, compared to who you truly are? What they have seen is different than what you intended. Indeed, we human locomotives travel on our own tracks. When analyzed by those watching us, we seem to be traveling in the opposite direction of where we are indeed going. Some see us as angels while others smell fire and brimstone. It is impossible to understand what another person is thinking.

We live in a mystery that we have written stories about to give us comfort and explain our reality to ourselves. A sense of place is vital to the journey. Who are we for this journey, and how can we help? Lovely people, wonderful people die young, and old crumudgeons live to be 100. The Grand Play is ongoing. I am reading Hamnet. William Shakespeare said all the world is a stage and we are players on it. We must learn our lines well. We have a mission and purpose and a reason for our existence. Others are counting on our performance. Shall we say we all see things differently, so what is the use? Or shall we agree from our sense of place that the message of Christ to love one another as I have loved you is fundamental?

We understand hunger when we see it. We see loneliness in the eyes of the marginalized. Pain is universal, and we all have felt its terror. The clarion call is clear. Include the marginalized and feed the hungry. Fight the oppression of human beings. Do not allow members of our human family to suffer. The universe is different for all of us, but the needs of our family are the same. We must pass the test that we were dropped into without our consent. We are in the auditorium with the teacher and monitors to ensure we are not seeking the answer to the test questions on our neighbor’s paper. We live in an orb of fog. We did not choose our arrival time nor the time of our departure. We must seek Peace.

‘They seem very unhappy,’ Little Girl said. ‘They like to use their army weapons and blow each other up,’ Little Girl continued. ‘When one gets a nice automobile their neighbor wants the same car or better,’ LG laughed. ‘When I first began watching them, they loved to attend church on Sunday, but now they prefer to golf or play bingo,’ Little Girl observed. ‘It appears the more I give them, the more they want, and they are never satisfied,’ LG noted. ‘The white people do not accept the black people nor any with skin color other than white,’ Little Girl said. ‘The cry for mercy, but do not extend mercy to others in need,’ LG explained. ‘Lately, there have been many fires in the sky and the president of one country boasting about oil riches and his power to make any country do what he wants,’ Little Girl said with tears in her eyes.

‘Come to dinner, my dear, we will decide what to do with your school project after supper,’ Mother said. ‘The humans are a dissatisfied lot,’ Mother continued. ‘Dad bought the Earth at the Universal Box Store on Jupiter and thought you could do something with the creatures in the shadows.’ Mother said. ‘Your father thought the humans would enjoy his projections of the universe on the bedroom ceiling,’ Mother noted.