The view from the dumpster--Forgive me

The view from the dumpster—Forgive me

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have taken the Lord’s name in vain, along with the names of several other deities.  I have had impure thoughts and considered committing unnatural acts with a turkey. I have judged my fellow man for his failures and failed to consider another point of view because his actions are totally alien to me, and we’re supposed to love aliens. Let me get a point of clarification here, does loving aliens and neighbors include the extra-terrestrial variety or just the local ones? The reason for the question is that some of these “people” that you would have me love are actually so peculiar and in some cases so offensive that I have to believe that they are actually from some other planet, in a galaxy far, far away. And if that’s the case, then first let me express my gratitude for keeping the others of those far away, and let me petition you to contact the appropriate deity or lesser deity in their border patrol and ask that they retrieve their lost kind. As you might have noticed, we certainly have enough assholes here already and we really don’t need any more. Think about all of the soulless politicians we already have, they don’t really want any more competition. 

I don’t want to come across as ungrateful, or insubordinate, but you and the rest of the Universe sent me here to do a job, and I’m cool with that, but I’m close to retiring and now, you throw stuff at me that I’ve never seen before. Really? You sent me forth to take care of the planet and take dominion and all of that stuff, you know the feed people, make sure they have homes, clean water and all of that. I’ve done what I could and am still trying, focusing on teaching others, carrying around my own special version of the gospel, as you told me to. But, as I sit here in confessional, I have to really wonder which one of us needs to be confessing. Where did you find these weird people, did you create them or are they escapees, of failed experiments. Let me tell you what’s got my knickers in a twist.

On Monday, I was in a grocery store, in the middle of the panic hoarding rush and found that of course paper products were no longer on the shelf, but there were no bananas (yes, they had no bananas) and no potatoes (I’m married to a Mick, do you know how much trouble this caused me?), but worse than that, the entire meat aisle was empty, except for a few things at $19.95 a pound and you know I ain’t going there. I actually didn’t need any meat, but many of my brethren did. When I finished there, I went behind the shopping center and to the dumpsters at the adjacent office/retail building. And in their cardboard dumpster, I found two bags of frozen meat. Bags of meat that obviously came from a food pantry had been thrown away. This is the point where my language became colorful, this is where I wanted to do unnatural things with a frozen turkey, but I couldn’t find the responsible recipient of my intent. The small packets of meat, were marked “not for sale” and were produced for and distributed by the Church of the Latter Day Saints, nice folks and your children, trying to do the right thing. And some low life bit of scum took advantage of them, for some purpose I don’t understand and then threw their efforts in to the trash.

I have tried to reconcile this, I have tried to understand, and I have failed. I have hesitated sharing this, because I didn’t want to discourage others, knowing that there are so many who do what is right, knowing that there are so many who are working diligently to help others. But I couldn’t keep this to myself. The people, who did this, need help, but not the kind of help that they are receiving from a food bank. They need help in finding a way to understand their role in the community, how they fit in and how the community supports them. They need to step away from the false teachings of our leadership who underscore the acceptability of greed, avarice, who care not about the people and only themselves. They need to step away from a leadership that would spend the bulk of our budget on ways to kill someone else’s children, while reducing the support for the children in our own country. They need to step away from a failed leadership and realize that they are merely misguided pawns, being utilized to achieve goals and objectives, which they will not profit or benefit from.

And while I deal with the Hail Mary’s, and choke on some communion wafers, I ask that the rest of you step up and help me. I ask that you pray for those who are lost and don’t understand the impact of their actions, that you pray that they find the way, and I pray that all of you will help them find the way, and at the very least forgive them, for they know not what they do, but if you see them in action, well you know what to do with the turkey, think of it as a turducken.