Our Lord says that he has other sheep that are not of this fold and that He will call them and so we should hope given the current flock of Republican candidates for president – rams confused by morals, ethics and the legal voting age---that our Lord will summon other sheep quickly. We must always maintain Hope while we plow ahead each day to acquire inner peace and income, which for me started this morning as I dashed about trying to find my car keys (they were in my pocket all along) and was late to work only to find I had also forgotten my wallet. One more confused sheep in need of a watchful shepherd.
Hope. Your financial advisor, Carol, calls and explains to you that with the fall of the dollar and the volatility of annual average accruals, she’s thinking a comprehensive safe harbor release of matured assets with marginal fluctuations minimized while Jupiter aligns with Mars and it’s the dawning of the age of Aquarius and so you say “Fine, do it.” For all you know you just gave her permission to get fifty grand in twenties and she catches the next flight to Aruba where by midnight she’s eating sturgeon caviar. You pray not. You hope not.
Intense paranoia belongs to people who live about a mile to the right of Attila the Hun. Such as people who live in Wyoming and stock pile AK-47’s, grenades, bullets and cans of beanie weenies in preparation for the overthrow of the government or invasion by space aliens. This is not for intellectuals like you and I who sit at Starbucks sipping latte’s and mochas, not brooding over antibiotics in our skim milk or worry about thought control drugs sprinkled onto our French fries by fast food restaurants operated by the CIA. No, each morning we read our newspapers taking in article after article that warn of some calamity creeping towards us like a tiger stalking the forest deer. We shrug at the coming apocalypse, turn the page and butter our toast.
We remain hopeful people. I bought a book that tells you how to speak Spanish. It has helpful phrases in it (“I have back pain.” “Where is the bathroom?” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”). It was the most hopeful investment I have made in years but proved to be a most wasteful expenditure of funds. I imagined myself becoming fluent and conversing with people about the weather or their well being. Instead when I tried to impress a waitress in a Mexican restaurant and inquire about her family it came out “How is the foot mountain today for supper did you?”
I realized later I could also mistakenly have said “My right ventricle just stopped working” and while I shout “No, amigos!” they have thrown me on the floor and a 200 pound bearded waiter in a sombrero gives me mouth to mouth and someone sticks the electric paddles to my chest and screams the Spanish equivalent of “Fire in the hole!” (incendio en el hoyo!) and right there beside the taco bar my body flops like a fish and my hair begins to smoke. For me, this is possible.
This year we can hope and pray for the addition of good sheep in Washington instead of the current goats that nose through the garbage and we can hope the new ones will endeavor to work for the common good. On the other hand they are part of the same crowd that wanted to converse in Spanish and that didn’t happen either. But, we can always hope.
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