It's a bit of a corny tune, but ifya wanna listen to this song,
written by Paul McCartney and performed by
Mr. McCartney and Stevie Wonder
(Sometimes friends tease me and call me Stevie Wonder
and have since I wuz a kid - I like that, and I like Stevie Wonder and
Paul McCartney--not as much as John Winston Ono Lennon, though).
All ya gotta do is click on the link above. :)
Hi everybody.
How are all of you. A lot of you have been reading my stories.
More than I even hoped.
I'm glad of that. Yup! Sure am. What a nice surprise.
So good Sunday morning.
Ya know what I'm gonna write this morning, since it's Sunday?
A Parable.
Yup.
A Parable about Tweety Birds.
I luv the birds in my backyard.
We have bird feeders
and my favorites are the Cardinals.
I mean the bird kind, not the ordained kind, like Cardinal George, here.
Though I'm sure he's probably a pretty nice guy. :)
I think maybe all those Catholic priests are getting kinda of a bad rap
these days because of that whole bad apple thing.
There weren't a few bad apples treating kids bad, that's for sure.
There were a whole bunch 'o 'em. Phew. Poor kids.
But I think the majority of guys like this Cardinal are probably
good guys trying real hard to do good.
But back to birds. :)
I don't like this picture of my favorite bird. He looks mean.
The birds in my backyard never look like that. They're pretty peaceful
for the most part.
Not always, but when they get upset it's usually becuz they're
watching out for themselves and their pals.
This guy in the Halloween costume looks mean, too. I don't want to meet him.
He looks like he wants to beat me up, and he looks like he
wants his team to win at any cost.
Not for me.
No way!
Same with this one. He looks meaner than all get-go.
All he's doing is playing a kids' game, baseball, for crying out loud! Jeeeze.
When studying game theory in military affairs journals, publications, and
Defense Department documents, I learned the difference between
zero sum games and non-zero sum games.
Life is not a zero sum game.
Neither is war, by the way, Mr. Obama and Mr. Gates and Mr. Admiral
or whatever ya wanna be called Mullens, Petraeus, McChrystal
and all you misguided advocates of more and improved and
deadlier weapons to create a better world. :)
Now here's a Cardinal forya.
A real pretty one, not looking mean at all. Just as pretty as the ones
in my back yard.
Here's another. Can't get enough of 'em canya?
My second favorite of my backyard birds are the Orioles. Are they perty! Phew!
OMG! They're absolutely gorgeous. All the pretty colors. :) I luv 'em!
I like this cartoon one. The Oriole up above, I mean. That one looks pretty
and proud.
I kinda like this one, too. It's cuter 'n the mean Cardinal ones.
But I'm not sure I like how they make a profit off him and how he's a
Registered Trade Mark.
And I don't know if anyone should profit off of a silly game like baseball and
turn it into a business venture where it seems like everyones' out to
profit off everyone else, and kids forget its just a game with sticks,
balls and something to throw down for bases.
I luv the doves in my backyard. They're cool.
Their heads' sorta bob up and down when they strut.
Didja know pigeons are doves 2? Yup! They are. They get a bad rap becuz
there are so many of 'em in the big cities and people think they're a
nuisance. They've adapted to becoming almost domesticated
outdoor creatures, and I luv em. When I go to the park
feeding 'em is soooo much fun! LOL
They're actually called Ground Doves--the pigeons, that is.
This one here looks more like the ones in my back yard.
Doves are my favorite bird of all becuz of one reason. They symbolize
P E A C E ! ! !
When they're carting around olive branches in their beaks there's
nothing prettier on Earth!
Doves should be the official bird of Humans!
The sparrows are among the smallest and kind of, well, sort of plain Jane birds.
But there's always plenty of 'em - they're reliable and always there.
And they sing up a storm. Make beautiful music together, like this pair. ;-)
And after they make some beautiful music they produce a tiny beauty like
this sparrow right here.
"A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush."
LOL
So here's the parable.
Jesus liked parables.
And I just LOVE Jesus!!!
I'm pretty smart, and I know what parables are.
I learned about 'em a long, long time ago in Sunday School.
Parables are a way of telling one story about sumthin' so you
can get a point across real good.
My favorite Jesus parable is the Mustard seed one.
That one goes like:
Mustard seeds are like really tiny seeds, small ya know?
But when ya plant 'em they grow into really big plants
and produce more seeds and ya can turn
'em into herbs and flavorings and make Gulden's mustard out of 'em
and all kinds of gudd stuff! At least I think ya can make mustard out of
'em, Jesus never said that. He just said the tiny seeds
grew into huge trees! OMG! Wow.
So the lesson is:
If ya plant small seeds, sometimes big things grow.
Sooooo...
If ya treat people gudd,
just maybe
other people will treat people gudd.
And perty soon most everyone'll be treatin' everyone gudd!
Great Parable Jesus!
My favorite.
Thankya Jesus.
Ok. Parable time.
There's this backyard and a bunch 'o cool feeders for birds. :)
Sometimes the birds eat alone, sometimes not.
Sometimes a whole bunch climb on together and eat all at once, knocking
seeds down and a bunch more eat down below.
Sometimes only one kinda bird eats at the same time.
"Birds of a feather flock together."
But that's really hardly ever true.
Most 'o the time they're eatin' together,
all different kinds 'o birds all at once all on the same bird feeder.
It's really cool
to see all the birds of all different colors
in the yard together or
even on the same feeder together.
Kinda symbolic, yaknow?
Like people of different races, ethnicities and beliefs
all havin' dinner together
or sumthin'???
Ya getit?
I'm not supposed to explain my parable
but I can't help it.
That's
ok.
Just look at that pic. Yellow and Blue breakin' bread together.
How
Cool
Is
That???
Ebony and Ivory,
Black and White,
Yellow, Red, Brown, Rainbow
all together
on the
Same Page
Please
Jesus!
Then ya have your squirrels. How cute are they?
Really cute, I'll tellya. Yessir!
Cute as a pin, boy.
But they earn their reputation, they can be devilish at times.
They call me squirrelly sometimes.
I hafta agree! ;)
Kinda confused, and kinda believin' I hafta do whatever it takes to survive.
Even if it means taking advantage of the other guy!
Phew.
How hard has it been getting rid 'o that tendency!
Wow.
The squirrels in this particular yard weren't worin' to hard
on themselves in this regard.
They were actually pretty militant.
Doing everything to control the food situation in the back yard.
Alone or with the other squirrels
out only to make sure that squirrels(the United States of America, rich people, or white folks) got what they thought they needed at the expense of everyone else.
Imagining that life wuz a zero sum game and that if the birds got to
use the feeder that they'd get nuthin'!!!
So they intimidated(pointing nukes at the rest 'o the world, passin' discriminatory laws, or not enforcing laws on the books, doin' everything to keep the other critters, I mean races and income levels and nations at bay) the birds anyway they could to keep them off the bird feeders.
And they're squirrels, remember?
There's squirrel feeders in the neighbors' yards.
And tons of space between them and the other guys, and whenever they
threaten or assault the other guys have wings for defense only and just
fly away.
Bye bye.
Here's that Elton John tune forya again, from my last poem. :)
It's about Butterflies, but it has the line about flying away bye bye("Someone Saved My Life Tonight):
So these guys would just occupy whatever feeder they wanted and
the nice birds would just wait in the trees for 'em to be all full(of oil, territory,
economic exploitation), and then come to pick up the crumbs after.
:-(
The squirrels(America, the wealthy, the white men--like me--and the
'middle class') weren't mean or "evil."
"God don't make no junk."
Ever!
It's not my place to judge the squirrels(or other people, according to Jesus).
But sometimes it IS my job to reluctantly judge their actions.
So if there is to be justice, I hafta express meself sumtimes!
And get angry.
Anger's ok, it's whatcha do with it!
Yaknow???
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, for example.
The Reverend Doc. MLK Jr.
"Had a Dream"
and spoke about it
got arrested
and nonviolently changed the nation.
So did Mahatma Gandhi.
And Bishop Desmund Tutu
and
President Nelson Mandela.
So are a bunch 'o folks in Cairo right now.
Good luck with that folks in Cairo.
:)
Peace
So these guys were just looking greedy to me, violent bullies in my book--
the squirrels, that is. That's my reluctant judgement of their actions.
They were confused by that zero sum mentality that the back yard was
a Superbowl game with only one winner and one loser.
That there was always only one group of winners and then ya
have your losers.
And the squirrels(America, the wealthy....) were gonna be winning at all cost!!!
What they didn't realize was that if they cooperated, love would ensue.
Unconditional Love
And that everyone would win.
Lincoln knew.
So did
MLK.
And
Gandhi,
Tutu
And
Mandela.
A bunch 'o young squirrels got ahold 'o this idea. Created a movement for peace.
They knew that if they just would eat out of the neighbor's squirrel feeders,
let the birds gobble out of the feeders in all the neighborhood yards,
and eat what was in their own feeders and
what bounty came to all from the seeds falling on the ground when
flocks of birds
fed at the bird feeders
instead of squirrels looking silly,
risking their lives, intimidating the birds and others,
creating an atmosphere of mistrust, fear and war in the back yard,
by trying to occupy feeders by force which were never meant for squirrels;
these kids knew that instead of that zero sum military "Game" Theory idea,
everyone in the backyard would wind up a winner instead of just the squirrels
who were really losing too, the kids pointed out to them and educated their
other squirrel counterparts.
I'm going Vegan by the way, this is Eriyah Flynn, a friend and famous Vegan advocate, she's beautiful and I need her help. I don't look gudd like her at all, and I should be better, and eating meat isn't helping much. I'm a mess physically and don't want to eat critters any more. I have a series of articles called MomCat's Vegan Project at:
I also write articles at:
That's Eriyah, savin' critters every day! What a gal.
The squirrels made T-shirts, and protested non-violently. Even sat down in front
of other squirrels to stop 'em from jumpin' onto bird feeders and stuff so
they could make their point and teach them and win
the hearts and minds of all the squirrels.
Jesus knows all the birds(everyone else in the world except the American government, the wealthy "middle class," the selfish among the white guy zero-summers") were already in the corner of the peacenik civilly disobedient squirrels!
YIPPEE!
A MOVEMENT'S AFOOT.
MAYBE IT BEGAN IN INDIA,
CAME TO THE U.S.
IN THE 60'S,
WOUND UP IN SOUTH AFRICA
AND IS IN EGYPT TODAY.
So talks were held. Between Squirrels and Birds.
Finally a Big Summit meeting.
P E A C E !!!
VICTORY FOR ONE AND ALL
IN THE BACK YARD
Squirrels were finally eating with birds.
WITH the birds.
TOGETHER in a state of
Unconditional Love
at
Peace
and no longer at
War.
Yuck.
War.
Spring or winter,
Summer or fall...
Squirrels and birds working together
and humans
actually giving out more
birdseed than ever before.
So more food for all the birds and squirrels!
The squirrels who opposed talks and peace said:
Who knew???
We pacifists do.
Peace
IS
THE
answer.
Always
and
Always.
World without end
So sez Jesus
who is
Unconditional Love
He's the Father, the Son AND the
Holy Spirit.
And that Spirit is:
Unconditional Love
JOY TO THE WORLD.
THE LORD IS COME.
THE PRINCE OF PEACE.
LOVE INCARNATE AND
THEN TAKEN, CRUCIFIED
AND DIED FOR MY SINS
DESCENDED TO HELL
AND AROSE AGAIN
AND ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, AND
IS NOW SEATED AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE
FATHER.
THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IS DESCRIBED IN MANY
RELIGIOUS AND NON-RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS.
IT IS PERHAPS BEST DEFINED AS A SPIRIT OF
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
AND THE ABILITY TO DISCERN
THE BEST WAYS OF CARRYING
THAT PRINCIPLE THROUGH TO COMPLETION.
THE SQUIRRELS LEARNED.
CAN PEOPLE,
ESPECIALLY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
AND IT'S
GOVERNMENT?
THE REST OF THE WORLD IS AWAITING ON US.
AND WE AMERICAN PACIFISTS HAVE THE KEY TO PEACE IN
THE WORLD.
CHRISTIANS HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO STEP UP.
I'M INSPIRED BY THE PEOPLE OF EGYPT THIS WEEK.
MAY THEIR AIMS BE ACHIEVED IN PEACE AND
THEIR RESULTS BE LIKE THOSE OF THE
SQUIRRELS AND THE BIRDS IN THE BACK YARD
OF THIS PARABLE.
And may everyone live happily ever after.
In Jesus' Precious Name
I Pray.
Time for church. It's 9:37 Sunday Morning.
Cya there if you're Christian and a church goer.
If not, let's get peace done
pacifistically
and love one another and hug alot along the way.
Christians and Jews.
Muslims, Hindus, agnostics and atheists...
together on a road...
Please
peace.
Amen.
Steve Alexander
