On the table here beside me is the camera, a pen, some binoculars and some papers and books, and a bowl of small oranges. The sun is lighting squares on the floor from the window panes in the french doors and windows that make up the wall of this dining room.

And this "is a day that the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it."

We are far from Gaza or Iraq or Afganistan or Darfur. (This list is not meant to be all inclusive of the places on our planet where people are being murdered by other people.) We awoke this morning and the question was, is the sun shining. We raised the shades and got the answer. It was. It is.

Then start the hot water for tea and take seeds to the birds who are digging through the snow that fell during the night, to find leftovers from yesterday. Our concerns are: how are we feeling today? Is John better? Am I holding steady in my resistance?

It is quiet outside. It was quiet all night. We heard no bombs dropping or lazars firing -- no great waves of fireworks that kill. Outside this window is sky, much sky. And the junipers, the adobe wall, the birds and the mountain. There are no fires threatening to consume our house and there are no dead and wounded lying about.

We are not homeless. We have too many homes. Two that we own and this one, that we rent. We did not sleep in our car last night, like the lucky homeless who still have a car to sleep in. This world has become a precarious walk across a deteriorating rope bridge over a bottomless gorge. People are screaming and falling off, left and right, and yet there is nothing else to do but keep walking.

The Bernie Madoffs and Dick Cheneys of the world are shaking down the walkers before they enter the bridge and somehow we all just keep handing them what they want. And I am not certain that refusing to read the news or watch it on television will help in the long run.

And not sure that this situation is within the realm of reversal. Even Obama and his good intentions seems already to becoming confused. Which way to turn. How much to expend. On what? Simple seems to be out of range completely and forever.

Is this God's plan? Does God plan these things? Are we all part of this pagent moving toward Armegeddon and the End of the World as the Fundamentalist Preachers and Authors are promising?

And yet the sun is shining here. The little birds are hopping around the snow, eating their breakfast. The sky has a few little raindeer-shaped clouds moving east, and we have food in the pantry. How do we make sense of the whole picture of our earth and what is happening? I am guessing that each of us has to seriously pick up the gauntlet... what what on earth does that mean? What do I do? I want the little packet that I unfold and inside is the next assignment, signed, God. How about it?