Cow, Pigs, Wars and Witches in everyone's neck of the Woods

Good long awaited Morning,

I think writer's block hits us all, though for me it's for want of focus on the writing, not for ideas.  Music itself energizes and emphasizes the flavors in life all around us, opening our minds to unsought insights, joys and contemplations.

So, after seven silent weeks, why would I use the subject line of Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, the famous anthropoligical  book by Marvin Harris, as fodder for today's blog?  I mean, I have several adolescent trees near our leach field that need removal and transplant onto a hillside.  Don't I have better things to accomplish on a Saturday morning?

Yes and no.  Maybe Mr. Harris, who taught Young College Jose about cargo cults and disbelieving that all gold is golden, never left my mind.

I wondered this week about cows, as we debated the neighbor's wisdom in buying 3 pregnant cows as pets for his young kids; he grew up in a dairy farming family, so the species choice sort of makes sense.  But moo'ing and poop'ing cows in one's front yard?  It's their life, though, and we hope they enjoy the cows!

Pigs are everywhere, especially the Pigs of War who can't be happy we've just about lost another round against the bad guys and now are scouring Africa and the Middle East for someplace else to throw away our younger folks' health, ambitions and maybe lives, not to mention more precious tax dollars.  Haven't we enough to do here in our splendid US of A?

A truer War is essentially all around us as we struggle to uphold and celebrate those values that got us here.  Mental illness, mass shootings, and incivility all are things to be fought in a positive, meaningful way.  Me personally, I hear it from places like friends on the phone, the societal debacle that is Detroit, and in the chronically poor whom government of all flavors hasn't raised up.  We must fight on.

And Witches.  Maybe the Evangelical Right has it right and my beliefs, and that of our multi-million member church, have it flat wrong.  I don't see gays and Muslims and etc. as the devil.  Am I to listen to an acquaintance and avoid Ellen DeGeneres because she's gay, and ignore her well-known on-air outreaches to struggling women in need?  That type of stereotyping, especially by people I've met and somewhat like, repels me.  But maybe I've learned and 'felt' the Scriptures wrongly, and God does not really love and cherish us all.  Or maybe the witches are actually someone else, those casters of stones? I wait to be enlightened.

No railing, no flame, no anger today.  Just maybe aggravation that too often we ignore the tough social issues and thus make them ever more difficult to resolve and blend solutions and acceptance into our society.  So many calls to action:  pick one, let's say something like gun ownership, advocating for the poor, or for- or against- gay marriage.  Be willing to listen, to study history and to reflect before contacting your legislators and writing those protest placards.  It helps you grow and helps the rest of us learn -- there are many folks ready to listen.