Finding peace on Sunday in the pandemic

Our back yard continues so tranquil with the wildlife oblivious to the crisis going on in our human world. I remember setting Mom up for her morning bran flakes in the last delicate year of her life. We have rabbits in our neighborhood. No one is shooting them any more. We're in the city limits on the north end of Morris so we ought not use guns.
I realize wildlife can get out of control. Hunting has the purpose of managing it. My late father was big on hunting. I gather it was imbued in male culture when his generation was young. A major part of the 1940 Armistice Day blizzard history is the tragic ending for so many hunters. It's less popular today, isn't it? Seems so and it seems logical.
I appreciate my father's efforts at taking me hunting. It did not have the same appeal for me. We eventually got rid of all our guns. My father seemed to go through a philosophical change too. I remember him saying "live and let live."
Thoughts of family are paramount today as it's Sunday. Our house has big picture windows that face to the north. We have a rather "wild" back yard, a little overgrown and I've been working to remedy that. It's wild enough that logically we get wildlife. So Mom and I would enjoy seeing at least one rabbit on a typical morning.
I guess people with gardens are not comfortable with such a sight. But Mom and I found the rabbits quite agreeable. I don't really have a garden but I plant zinnias in a patch of soil directly in front of the house. This is in front of the large picture windows we have facing to the south. Dad obviously appreciated these views when planning the house.
I had one major home improvement project done right after Mom died. Western Products, a real fine company, came and put in new picture windows facing the south. My cousin Kenny of Idaho told me the south side of the house is more susceptible to the effects of aging as it faces the sun more. Western Products put in state of the art windows at a price that guaranteed this was going to be a pretty fine product! I endorse them.
Mom and I would have imaginary conversations with the rabbits some mornings. Let's remember Beatrix Potter. Judy Bluth of Morris is known as a big Beatrix Potter fan. She had a collection of Peter Rabbit books on display at the public library. I had an old book that I gave to her through our then-library director Melissa Yauk. Yauk BTW resides in Idaho now. Our librarian now is Anne Barber who is dealing with the circumstances of the shutdown for the pandemic.
My life is slow since leaving the newspaper world and I have depended on just a handful of public places for some social stimulation. The library is one of them. It's scratched off the list now. What isn't scratched off the list?
It's Sunday morning as I write this and I'd be at a restaurant for breakfast at around 8:15. Don's usually for Sunday. I'd park my car on west side of library in between Don's and my church. I miss seeing the waitresses at Don's and everyone who's normally there actually. After breakfast I'd walk to church. This is First Lutheran, a bastion for Christians who have not been sucked into the ultra-conservative world of Donald Trump.
I hope the hard-right Christians can continue to put up with us ELCA Lutherans. It's amazing because when I was young, Lutherans were considered conservative. The question then was to understand the difference between Lutherans and Catholics. I had friends who introduced me to Catholicism by taking me to Catholic bingo! Funny how I was accepted for bingo but I can't take communion at a Catholic funeral. An old friend with whom I shared this point retorted: "We'll always take your money!"
Today it's not the dichotomy of Protestants and Catholics that characterize faith. We have the zealous Trump crowd that seems so abrasive and paranoid. They can't stand being dragged into the mid-portion of this new century. But they had better put parts of their regressive political agenda aside now - we have the pandemic that ought to command our unified attention.
Instead we have Trump - so predictable this was - pounding away with the paranoid political stuff, his flock everywhere so eager to follow him, to shout "fake news" at the media etc.
Well I'm a proud ELCA Lutheran and really do not consider myself terribly political anyway. I simply accept gay rights and women's reproductive health rights as proper and most incontrovertible. There is room for debating around the edges. It needs to be calm which is something that Trump knocks over like a bear with boxing gloves. It's always "us vs. them" in his eyes, and he cannot resist turning up heat on Democratic governors like our own most reasonable Gov. Walz. How petty and shallow. How needlessly combative.
There is one escape I can find from the tremendous pandemic stress and Trump fatigue. And that's to look out the picture window to our back yard with its rabbits and other wildlife. Mom and I would imagine the rabbits talking about how they liked our yard. Oh, ditto with the squirrels. How amazing is their skill with jumping from one high-up tree branch to another.
I began my previous post by quoting "just another day in paradise." I intended it having some ironic meaning. But in the peace of a Sunday morning, looking over our "wild" back yard, it has literal meaning. Who knows what the future holds now? We must caress the present with whatever joy it gives us. Peace.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwillyu73@yahoo.com