What Was It This Morning?

 What Was It This Morning?

“Life is what one wants in one’s soul.”

-         D. H. Lawrence

Spring is the season of profligate promise.  The song birds; cardinals, robins, jays, sparrows (and who knows who else) were all voicing their cacophony.  It was very nice, actually, and in early May in Maryland, the songbirds are as necessary as rain, which might just happen this day or next.

I read today that it is an old tradition in Asia to add a year to a person's "calendar" age to reflect the reality that they were around for approximately nine months before birth.   It makes sense.  Of course, they may use the lunar calendar as well, so by my reckoning, I am now fifty-two and nine months.  I prefer to mark days, however, so I am 18,780 days old from conception to now.

This was just a normal work day, nothing special.  I woke, used the bathroom, made and ate breakfast, went out the door to my car to work.  All this was solo accomplishment.  So why did I stop at a traffic light and glance an orange school bus to my left?  I think it was because one little boy was looking down at me and shyly smiling.  The bus lettering read “Karate Academy”, and a number of other children glanced my way since I waved.  A few waved back furtively, wondering if they should wave to strange men.  The little boy might have noticed my forearm crutch on the back seat.  It was only a moment.

I imagined the kids going to a meet or an exhibition, but it was only 8:20 in the morning, and what kind of academic school was that anyway?

Suddenly the air was electric.  It was rush hour but traffic was moving.  I was not late, for once, and the CD player was in the middle of Kim Edwards’ “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter."  It was clearly better than NPR and the horrific Iraqi War news, five years running.  If only Bush had a child in Iraq – the war would have been over in a week following enlistment.

Which leads me, inexorably, to organized religion and all manner of sky gods’ worship, and in particular, to Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and the golden tablets.  It is not more insane that the revelations of Gabriel to Mohammed, the stone carved Ten Commandments, the gospels of Jesus Christ, or the books of Moses.  It is even not more insane than beliefs in the teachings and followers of Zoroaster, Huitzilopochtli, Odin or Zeus, but it is also not less insane.  Notice some of our gods are dead, and none of them pertain to life forms on Mars, or unknown planets with their own life forms.

The Mormons (Later Day Saints of Jesus Christ) and Joseph Smith are special to us, however, because their religion is home grown in the United States of America and still alive.  The Branch Dravidians and David Koresh were home grown too, as was Jim Jones’ Peoples’ Temple group.  All of these charismatic male leaders are now dead.

The shy boy on the bus, however, is not.

Philip Fryer

May 2007