Hopewit

Western Meadowlark I am like an owl in the wilderness; I am like a screech owl among the ruins. I stay awake; I am like a solitary bird on a roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who mock me use my name in their curses. For I eat ashes as if they were bread, and mix my drink with my tears, because of your anger and raging fury. (Psalm 102: 6-10 NET) I've taken videos of birds. One was of American robins picking the mountain ash berries off a tree outside our window on the campus of AMBS. Another was of a crow walking back and forth along the roof ridge of the insurance office across an alley from our condo balcony. It's easy to imagine thought and intention behind those wide and alert eyes somehow; no matter where the robin is in his meander around the lawn, he gives the appearance of keeping close watch on you. Something, somewhere, sometime motivated a watcher to ask “Why?” when the chicken crossed the road. In King David's sad lament about

A Road Less Traveled By - Blackstrap Lake “Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it!” (Matthew 7:13 & 14. NET) This brief admonition was recorded by the writer(s) of Matthew as a stand-alone piece of advice, attributed to Christ as a small part of the Sermon on the Mount. We have a similar bit of philosophy from poet Robert Frost in The Road not Taken : “Two roads diverged in a wood and I / I took the one less traveled by /and that has made all the difference.” “ The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right,” Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen said cynically. It's a reminder that a proof based on the number of people that believe a thing . . . turns out to be a very shallow proof. And whose mother hasn't said at one time or ano