When I came across that quote recently, it instantly became one of my favorites. Here’s another -

“Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.” - Thomas Jefferson. Considering the story about Jefferson’s contemporary, George Washington and the whole cherry tree thing, maybe ol’ Thomas’ idea should have been considered reforestation.

And lastly, here’s a Native American saying that I like a lot - Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

I don’t know about you folks, but I never had much luck in the borrowing and lending department. When I borrow something, I’m usually pretty handy at finding some way to break it. And when I lend something, it seems as though I lend that ability as well. Perhaps Shakespeare had it right in Hamlet – “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

Matthew had a solution for the first part. Forget about the whole loaning concept. If someone asks you for something, give it to them and forget about it. Don’t expect to get it back. Dagwood Bumstead and his neighbour Herb work on this premise. If you’re not expecting something back, and you don’t get it, you’re not disappointed. And if it’s returned, you’re pleasantly surprised. What we like to call a win-win situation.

Borrowing is another matter. Especially when we’re borrowing from the future. Shakespeare was obviously a keen observer of human nature. The term “husbandry” isn’t about a course on how to be a good spouse. (Not that it wouldn’t be a good idea.) In fact, unless you’re in the agricultural business, you don’t hear the word much these days. Along with references to animal breeding, the dictionary says this about it: “responsibility for taking good care of resources entrusted to one”.

In other words, to get back to Shakespeare, the Bard says that when we borrow things we have a tendency to get a little slack about looking after them.

Which may explain why we’ve over fished the oceans, hit peak oil production, and depleted the ozone layer. To say nothing of suspect corporate accounting. It’s not that we don’t care; it’s just that we’re sloppy.

Now, you might think that it doesn’t really matter. The end result is the same. No fish, no oil, no ozone, no savings. And eventually, maybe, no life.

But in fact it matters a great deal. The first step toward fixing something is to understand why it’s broken.

Abraham Lincoln once said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” He was probably thinking about Jefferson and Washington.

The point is, we need to understand why we’re facing the environmental and social challenges that we are. It’s easy to just blame material greed or religious self-righteousness. Its tempting too, because it lets us point fingers at people. Especially people who aren’t us.

The idea of sloppy husbandry, however, makes us look at it differently. If our poor care of resources is a result of our practice of borrowing from the future, then perhaps the solution is as simple as Shakespeare’s advice. Let’s not borrow any more.

Or at least, when we take Dagwood’s saw back, let’s replace the blade we broke first.

And when we give the world back to our kids, maybe we could clean it up a little bit first as well.

I don’t quite agree with this quote of Ms. Armstrong.  I would modify her comment to say that “religion is at its worst when it seeks to answer questions absolutely.”

Human beings are seldom content with unanswered questions. If we were, much of the progress that has taken place over our history wouldn’t have happened. Unanswered questions are like an itch that many of us can not ignore until we’ve scratched it.

A religion that could only ask questions would be a sad thing indeed. How would it offer solace to the afflicted? How would it entice us to engender change? How would it challenge us to be better than we are?

But a religion with absolute answers is, it seems to me, tragic. The solace it offers is narrow, its comfort reserved for a few who adhere to its doctrine. It engenders not change but blind conformity. And rather than challenge us to be better, it challenges us to ignore our experience of God in our lives, relying instead on the interpretations of a few, whose own preferences and perceptions cannot help but influence their pronouncements.

There’s a better way. A way that allows religion to not only ask questions, but to offer answers, although those answers may change as we change, as the world changes.

If we see religion’s answers as appropriate to the people who offered them, for their people, in their time, and in their place, we free religion to transform not only itself but us. Because we then begin to see religion as not just the stuff of a dusty old book, something that stopped speaking millennia ago; we begin to see it as the living experience of a living God in a living, changing Creation.

Let’s hope that religion never stops being the best at asking questions. But lets hope that it learns how to also be the best at answering them. By doing it again and again and again.

I have been challenged more than once on this statement, which I coined a few years ago. In its original, it read apathy is a more dangerous religious position than fanaticism. I was writing to a group of “religious” people of course, who were at the time, totally preoccupied with religious extremism.

But its true in pretty much every aspect of our lives. The man who abuses his spouse can only do so because others turn a blind eye. The woman who neglects her kids can only make her excuses plausible if we’re willing accomplices in the fabrication.  And of course, we have all been ample witnesses to what happens when we become apathetic about politics. I’ll be posting a companion piece over on Reciprocal Politics about that.

In one of those hidden camera episodes, a TV news program staged a fight between a man and woman in a park, with the man obviously browbeating the woman. They wanted to see how people would react.

Some passed by. Several called 911. One person stood next to the woman who was being abused and told the man he might as well leave because she wasn’t going to. Simple as that. Did she put herself in harm’s way? If the situation had been real, possibly. But there were others there, and the man would have been unlikely to risk things escalating. He would have been concerned that others would no longer be content to “do nothing” either.

For good people to do nothing. So simple isn’t it?

And so is the counter to it. For good people to do something.

May we all do something today, and every day.

Because, apathy really is a more dangerous position than fanaticism.

When I was younger and my father wanted to remind me that it was just possible that I didn’t know absolutely everything, he used to say it this way: “I see, said the blind man, and he didn’t see a damn thing.” (I really hated it when he said that.)

On an intellectual level, we can agree that God is beyond our ability to comprehend. And yet, the words are no sooner said than we begin to act as though the little bit we know is all that there is or could be. We want God to conform to our limited understanding.

The idea that there is more to the elephant, or to God, than we can grasp upsets us. There is already enough uncertainty in our lives. It would be comforting to have the security of a God who stayed within the boundaries we set. However God, like the elephant, is not going to change just to satisfy us. If we want to be comforted, we will have to learn to accept a Creator who encompasses the incredible diversity of Creation.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant underscores the absurdity of trying to describe the Indescribable. Hundreds of books attempt to analyze and demystify religion. As far as religion is a human institution we might expect some success. But religion is not God. All of our analyses are bounded by the limits of human understanding. A limit that God doesn’t share.

The situation is no different now than it was two thousand years ago. People wanted security then just as much as we want it now. And they were no less cynical of the explanations of God offered by their priests and philosophers than we are of those offered by ours.

When asked, Jesus offered a simple formula to resolve this. “Love God with all your heart and mind and strength.” We can hold on to whichever part of God makes the most sense to us. We just need to be able to accept that God is more than the part we understand.

Which reminds me of a story. “I see said the blind man, grasping the elephant by the tusk …”

“Here” was a local restaurant and bar. The staff is friendly and the food is good. They bring in some pretty decent jazz groups and the trio that was playing knew how to play to the crowd. The night was pretty well advanced and the crowd, including our table, was doing its best to be part of the performance. We shouted encouragement, sang off key, and ordered another round.

I was pretty sure I knew what my friend meant, but just to play devil’s advocate I asked her to be more specific. I was right. She had a stereotype firmly in mind. “Religious people” are supposed to be against alcohol and rowdy behaviour. This friend and her partner have known me for some time. I was curious as to how she could have gotten this perception of me.

As we talked between lyrics, it became clear that she wasn’t quite sure herself. It was simply that when she thought of me in the context of writing “Life and Faith”, she couldn’t get it to square with me pounding the table in applause for a great keyboard riff.

I assured her that I was indeed the same person. No Jekyll and Hyde personality necessary to explain the discrepancy. Everyone in the crowd was enjoying themselves (one fellow got up about every second tune and danced to the music), the band was in fine form, and no one was being hassled.

How could anyone have a problem with that?

Where did we get the idea that religion is supposed to be dour and grim? That certainly wasn’t what Jesus taught. Wasn’t the first recorded miracle turning water into wine? Seems to me that if Jesus had been a teetotaler he’d have done it the other way. He’d have turned the wine into water. If Jesus had wanted to be labeled a killjoy, that would have done it. I doubt he’d have been invited to many weddings after that.

Of course, Jesus had problems with his contemporaries’ perception of him too. He was criticized for eating in “sinners” houses. He was called a glutton and a drunkard. And he turned water into wine. Not exactly a poster child for the Temperance League.

Folks, there’s no question that alcoholism and other addictions are serious problems. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m unaware of that fact.

However, faith isn’t supposed to be an inventory of the things that are wrong in the world. It’s supposed to help us realize that we need to appreciate the things that are right. Then maybe we’ll want to make more things right. If we do that often enough, before we know it everything can be right.

You can find a faith tradition that’s against just about anything. But is that what Jesus intended? Not the guy I read about. It was all those people who had rules against everything that he had trouble with.

We need to enjoy, to savor, every minute of every day. We need to be as joyful, as thankful, for everything we have as God intended.

We can certainly do that in thoughtful reflection and prayer. We can do it in a church sanctuary. And we can also do it while listening to jazz and singing off key.

In fact, my friends seemed to understand this before the night was over. At least, they expressed considerable gratitude when I stopped singing.

Strangely enough, I first read the quote in a comic book. I was maybe twelve at the time. It was a crime story, about a kidnapper who sacrifices himself to save the child he’d kidnapped. The quote was the epitaph uttered by the cop standing over the body in the last panel of the comic.

Those words have stuck with me for forty years.

It would be so much easier to make decisions if the world were nicely divided into good guys and bad guys wouldn’t it? I think that one of the reasons that I remember that quotation so vividly is because up until that time that’s the way my young mind saw things. The good guys wore white hats. The bad guys wore black.

Unfortunately, as Paul said, as we grow up we have to put aside the simplistic way that we used to see the world. Life isn’t as neat and tidy as a movie and it seldom offers us the absolute answers that we’d like. In big things and small, life tends to be somewhat more gray than black and white.

How, for instance, do we respond to the guy who donates his time to the community, is first on the scene in a crisis, but who has what used to be called “wandering hands”?

Or the mother who juggles a job, a home, and still bakes for her daughter’s sports club, but who never misses an opportunity to belittle that same daughter in front of her friends?

Or the boss who is brilliant at scheduling production, always exceeds corporate targets, and got the cafeteria vending machines replaced, but who has never promoted one of “those” people (whatever definition that might take), and has made it clear that he never will?

There are times when it may seem that we’ve slipped towards a mindset that says that since no one is really “good”, we might as well all enjoy being “bad”. We idolize celebrities whose primary contribution seems to be the level of excess that they’re able to achieve. We make heroes of gangsters. And we make excuses for not being involved with the people next door who need a hand.

Does our admitted imperfection really mean that we shouldn’t even try? I don’t think so.

And we’ve made progress. We’re not so easily swayed as we once were by the concept that “rank hath its privileges”. Nor are we as likely to believe that we “can’t fight city hall.” And, while there are still voices that call for intolerance and that prophecy Armageddon if we to speak up for tolerance and justice, society seems to be taking steps, if hesitantly, toward the recognition of our interdependence that Christ called the greatest commandment.

We need to remember that we don’t need to be perfect in order to do good. And that no matter how hard we try there are going to be times that little bit of bad means that we fail to live up to our own expectations.

Did you know that Stevenson didn’t actually use the words “little bit”. He actually said “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us”.

I like that. Because if we could just let ourselves believe that there really is an abundance of good in us, we might be a little less reluctant to spread it around.

Even just a little bit.

David

As the man approached the desk he noted a stream of people passing by so quickly that he was barely able to make out their faces. From what he could see, however, they all seemed happy; thrilled to be going wherever it was that they were going.

St. Peter looked up as he approached, smiled, and asked his name. When the man told him St. Peter touched the big book, frowned, touched the smaller book. A look of comprehension crossed his face. “Ah yes, you’re a “Bible believer” aren’t you?”

The man’s chest puffed up just a bit. He hoped the sin of pride wasn’t too evident. Surely it was justifiable. After all, being in the smaller book must mean that he was a member of an elite group. “Why yes I am,” the man said.

St. Peter waved to an assistant, who immediately came over. “Go with this man. He’ll take you to meet your guide. Welcome to heaven.” A knowing look passed between St. Peter and the assistant, but the man didn’t notice.

As he walked with the assistant, the man asked about the stream of smiling people. “Remember that big book on Pete’s desk? They’re all in there. Automatically counted and checked off. They’re headed for wardrobe to get their whites. Surely, as a Bible believing Christian, you know who they are.”

The man smiled. “Of course. The numberless multitude. Revelation 7:9.” He was a little smug about how quickly the chapter and verse had come to him. He missed seeing how the assistant rolled his eyes at the comment.

After a short walk, they arrived at a building. It looked like a pretty typical office building. Beyond the building, the man could see people strolling in what looked like an endless field or park. There were children running in the grass, small groups picnicking, a man casting a fishing pole at the edge of a river on which others were boating. And in the distance; was a glint of gold paving he saw? The man couldn’t wait to join them.

The assistant noted the man’s gaze. “Beautiful isn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll be joining them eventually.”

“Eventually?”

The assistant didn’t answer immediately. They had entered the building and arrived at a door. Knocking, the assistant opened the door and stood aside for the man to enter. As he passed him, the assistant held out his hand. “Jerry will take it from here, my friend. Welcome to heaven.” The man shook the offered hand, and entered the room. The assistant closed the door.

Inside, the room was an office, recognizable to anyone who had ever had cause to visit a government bureaucrat. The man at the desk, Jerry presumably, looked up, motioned to the chair on the opposite side of the desk, looked back down, as if waiting for something. The man sat down, noting that the only thing on the desk besides a large green blotter were two trays. One was labelled “In” and had a stack of papers that seemed to rise to the ceiling of the office. The other was empty. He wasn’t sure what Jerry was waiting for.

Jerry looked up again. “Welcome to heaven,” he said, in a tone that was polite enough, but didn’t seem very enthusiastic. The man wondered why, with all that beautiful parkland to use, God had set up such a dreary space to process the people in the small book. Perhaps it was to provide some familiarity to new arrivals. If so, it didn’t seem to be working too well.

A piece of paper materialized on Jerry’s desk. Jerry looked at it, looked at the man crossly. “Stop that,” he said.

“Stop what?”

Jerry tossed the paper at the huge stack of similar papers in the In tray. “Jots and tittles. Bah. Well, we’ll get to that in due time.”

He wasn’t really addressing the man, just muttering to himself, but the man asked anyway, “Jots and tittles? What’s Matthew 5:18 got to do with anything? Get to what? I don’t understand what’s going on. Could you explain this process please?” He was getting a bit suspicious of what was happening.

Jerry looked at him. “Very quick with those verses aren’t you? Well, we shall see. Could be a good thing. Then again…” His voice trailed off; then he seemed to remember the man’s question. You were questioning God’s judgment in creating this building.”

The man was taken aback. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He opened his mouth to protest but Jerry cut him off. “Save it. That one’s way down the list.”

“List?” For the first time, the man noticed a sign on the wall behind Jerry. Life Auditor, it read. “Why am I here? I demand to know.”

Jerry snorted. “Demand? You’re in no position to make demands my friend. I’m the Auditor, not you.” Jerry’s mouth opened but no words came out. “Well, you are a Bible believing Christian, aren’t you?” Jerry continued. “You of all people should understand. It’s my job to address all those jots and tittles you messed up on. And I assure you, my friend, I take my job very seriously.”

The man spoke up. “But I accepted Jesus! He’s the Way! The Truth! The …”

Jerry cut the man off. A piece of paper floated down off the pile. “John 14:6. Yes, yes. Everyone tries that. Bad translation I’m afraid. Poor interpretation. You really should have gotten a second opinion on that clause. When you pin so much of your case on such a small footnote, it pays to make sure you’ve got an ironclad case. Well, no matter, that’s a Standard Rebuttal. Covered on form 1701B, Revision 987.” A form appeared in front of the man, along with a pen. “Please fill that out in triplicate. Sign each copy and then I’ll approve it.”

The man looked at the form (there were a lot of questions), remembered the multitude streaming into heaven, enjoying the park, playing, picnicking. “This is hell isn’t it?”

A new paper materialized in front of Jerry, who looked annoyed. “More paperwork. I told you to stop that. And blasphemy, no less. Man, that’s seven forms times seven.” Jerry shook his head. “No, this is heaven. Now please, less talk, more form filling.”

When he handed Jerry the completed form, Jerry took it, reviewed it, made a couple of corrections (which the man had to initial of course), stapled it to the original paper, stamped it with a “Complete” stamp, and placed it in the Out tray. The man looked at the pile of paper on the desk. “I’ll never make it. You might as well send me to hell now. Why bother with the paperwork?”

Jerry looked at him. The man couldn’t tell if his expression was pity or contempt. “You guys never get it. There’s no hell bub. ‘Sin is sin’. All humans are imperfect. That’s the way God made all of Creation. Work in progress. God could hardly pick and choose who to throw away when, from God’s perspective, you’re all equally flawed.  But you were right about free will though. You did have a choice. You could choose to live by the letter of the Law or its Spirit. You chose the former.”

The man thought for a moment, said quietly, “And all those people streaming into heaven…” He trailed off.

“Lived by the Spirit. You got it. But hey, at least you’re in heaven, eh? And I got job security. Better than what you had in mind for anyone who didn’t see things your way huh? That’s hubris, by the way. I usually save it for last. Wait ‘til you see the forms for that one.”

He picked up a paper from the pile. “Okay, on December 17th, 2009, you passed a man on the street who was asking for change to call his mother. You had seven dollars and nine cents in your left pocket. Yet you chose not to help. That’s a Form 7985, Revision 8. Fill it out in triplicate and …”

The man picked up the pen resignedly. He might be in heaven, but it was going to be a long time before he got beyond this room.

A new piece of paper appeared on Jerry’s desk. He looked disgustedly at the man.

A very long time.

How can President Obama continue to misquote and abuse the Golden Rule without an outcry? The Golden Rule is not about “loving one another” but rather “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12) Furthermore, Christ did not come to bring peace but a sword, for the dividing of the heart. (Matthew 10:34, Hebrews 4:12 and Revelations 1:16) Yes, we all should love one another but realize there is no lasting peace apart from the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

You can read the article here.

It continually boggles my mind how people can claim to be Christian and yet still spout nonsense like this. I often wonder if they even bother to read what they’re writing. They love to quote Chapter and Verse, hoping to draw people into what I refer to as dueling Scriptures, a fool’s game if ever there was one. The Bible, like any book, is not interpreted a line at a time but as a whole. Case in point – the quote above.

(and before we start, its “Revelation”, there’s no “s”, as even a recent Jeopardy answer noted)

The reader’s point is unclear to me. I have invited him/her to come by L&F and engage in the conversation. I sincerely hope they’ll do so.

He (or she) correctly identifies the quotes as being related to personal spiritual growth (for the dividing of the heart). but seems to imply that this somehow indicates that there can’t be peace on this poor old rock unless we all adopt their particular religious stance.

The “I bring not peace but a sword” line always seemed to me, back in the day when the Bible seemed as simple as the story of a God in human form, to be a lament on Jesus’ part, an anguished cry that his message of peace would be turned into a justification for atrocity and oppression. It still works for me on that level.

Understanding the Bible better, however, brings new appreciation. The writer of Michael was a combative fellow. And so he writes a combative Jesus. Expand beyond Matthew 10:34 and you find Matthew having Jesus quote Micah, (a man’s enemies are the members of his own household) a reference whose origins we still recognize but the cultural content of which is lost to us in all but the faintest echo.

As a Christian, I value the message of the Christ. It guides my life, informs my decisions, strengthens me in times of challenge.

It does indeed divide my heart – it prevents me from the hubris of thinking that I have the only answer to how we should relate to God and to each other.

Over to you Bosan

The debate over the so-called Intelligent Design concept versus evolution repeatedly ends up in American courts.

What, you ask, is Intelligent Design? And moreover, why the heck should you care?

If you believe in a Creator, and I do, Intelligent Design at first glance sounds obvious. After all, it’s the theory that God created the universe. So far, so good. I’m on board with that. What’s to argue with?

Unfortunately, Intelligent Design proponents generally aren’t content to leave it there. When you get into the details of the idea, it turns out that Intelligent Design is really an attempt to make a literal translation of Genesis look like science. Which is what always gets it into trouble with thinking people. Especially when it comes to teaching the theory in schools. You see, the Americans have a rule that says it’s illegal to teach religion in a public school. And no matter how supporters try to get around it, Intelligent Design is a fundamentalist Christian perspective, commonly known as creationism.

The majority of people would agree with a statement that says that there is a Creator behind the mechanisms of the universe. After all, most of us believe in God. And a call to study how the hand of God appears in Creation is, to me, a valid and worthwhile pursuit. However, that doesn’t make the Creation story of Genesis science.

The creationist belief is divided into two groups; old earth creationists, and young earth creationists. Old earth creationists still consider Genesis historically accurate, but they are quite willing to allow that there were a heck of a lot of years going by in those six days.

Young earth creationists on the other hand believe that the world is only about six thousand years old, and that dinosaurs and human beings lived at the same time. I guess they missed the Jurassic Park movies. Human beings don’t fare too well against even small dinosaurs, let alone those T-Rex critters. If we’d all lived together, we’d most likely have just been listed as “lunch” in the fossil record.

One of my favorite science fiction authors, Robert Heinlein, had a solution for this. Heinlein was born in the US Bible Belt, but he had little use for religion. In one of his books his protagonist asks an angel to explain the conflict between the age in Genesis and the geological record that says the Earth has been around for a few billion years. God, she replies with a shrug, made the Earth old, complete with fossils and everything. Just for fun.

Well, why not? Voltaire said that God is a comedian playing to an audience that’s too afraid to laugh. Personally, I kind of like the idea. We all need a good chuckle now and again.

Trying to make the six days of Genesis literally true in spite of all scientific evidence is like trying to make your kids believe in Santa Claus after they saw Dad polishing off the milk and cookies.

When my kids began to question the reality of the jolly old elf, I didn’t run out and buy reindeer droppings to sprinkle on the roof to keep the cover-up going. I started talking about the spirit of generosity and charity that was represented by the idea of Santa Claus. I took their questions as a sign that they were ready to learn that some images don’t have to be literally true in order to represent truth.

Santa doesn’t have to come down our chimney in order for generosity to exist.

And Genesis doesn’t have to be history in order for God to exist either.

     A recent writer recounted how he had neglected to follow the instructions for breaking in his new lawnmower and as a result ruined the engine. Belatedly, he referred to the manual. (We all know that men do not read instructions don’t we? Maybe God is male after all, and didn’t bother to read the instructions before assembling Creation. That would explain a lot.) He found that it clearly stated that this oversight would not be covered under warranty.

     He decided to return the mower anyway, and to his great relief the manager agreed to perform repairs at no charge as a gesture of good will.

     The writer believes that God is the direct cause of everything that happens, like a puppeteer pulling our strings. So it followed that God “caused” him to ruin his new mower in order to teach him about the generosity of his fellow man. I guess it would also follow that God “caused” him to not read the instructions. Red Green would be proud.

     When I first told my sons that their mother had died, I told them that God needed her in Heaven. It seemed harmless, and to be honest, I couldn’t exactly accept the reality myself. The next day my youngest, who was not quite three at the time, struggled to understand what could have been so important that God had to take his mother away. I realized just how poor, and potentially damaging, an image I had created. We talked for a while, and eventually accepted that God had embraced her because she was so badly injured that the doctors could not help her. That is an image that I can still accept today.

     I know that there are those who find phrases like “It was God’s will” comforting in times of loss. I respect that. But when Jesus was asked about such things he replied with a reflection on a construction accident in Siloam. A tower had fallen on the workers and several died. He asked the people if they thought that those who were killed were somehow more sinful, more in need of punishment, than anyone else. Doesn’t seem like he thought it was “God’s Will” at all.

     God gave us a universe that runs more or less within a set of physical rules. Lawnmower engines require oil to operate, walls fall on construction workers, and cars collide. To try to justify this as God’s Will can lead to some really strange mental gymnastics. That manager, for instance. One scenario for repairing the mower under warranty is that he didn’t report the actual cause of failure. Which means he lied to the manufacturer, in effect stealing the cost of the repair. And God made all this happen because …? Hmmm. (Of course, it may simply have been within his discretionary allowance, who knows?)

     God did not kill my wife in a car accident. The Creator did not take away my sons’ mother because of some urgent need at the Pearly Gates. But given that the accident happened, God worked to create something good out of the shattered pieces. Lessons were learned, lives were changed.

     God “conspires to bring good out of all things.” That means that God tries to build on the ashes of catastrophe, and is always encouraging us to make positive choices.

     To act on those choices or not is up to us.

     I think I’ll go check the oil in my lawnmower.