Friday, February 15, 2008

signs of spring

Two days ago I am driving to work behind a school bus (one of dozens on the country roads in Wilmore.) Rain falls on ice and makes the drive perilous. I stay well behind the bus. But then, horrors! I see a small skunk racing out onto the road ahead of us both. The bus plows ahead, and I tap my brakes, and ARGH!!!! the bus squishes the skunk completely flat squirting all the spray my direction, even though I try to give as much space as possible. My prius is bathed in stink!

Just as the stink begins to settle to the strength of a dull headache, it happens again~! I am on the same road this morning at 7:45, the same spot, and two cars ahead of me a skunk is hit, flips sideways, rolls backwards as the car ahead of me swerves, and it lands - plop - right in front of me. I don't hit it, just bath in the beauty of natural odors.

So that is Kentucky folks. The skunks are up and about and that means spring is upon us. And my poor car, no longer the sacred car, is profaned fully. I can't even park it in the garage because the smell is so strong it floats into the house.

I am writing this because my grief and fury at what happened yesterday in Illinois is too hard to write about. At our seminary I have had a student threaten my life and several others. There is no commentary I can think of just yet that can adequately open this issue. I want to see the beauty that surfaces from good souls when pernicious acts invade their lives. But right now I am so very angry.

So let's talk about spring, which has beauty and some stink too.

1 comment:

Mrs Moose said...

i will open the IL Univ shooting conversation: if any of the public assisinations of innocent kids/students/shoppers in this country in the past ten years had been carried out by an int'l terrorist we would have declared war and spent billions of dollars to retaliate. but instead of addressing gun control issues and peace making we sit around and scratch our a**es while we let our own citizens terrorize each other.