I listened to Gerry Brooks making some comments today and one thing he said really resonated with me and made me think of Chief. When I would complain about having to do something I didn’t want to do, Chief would always say, “Just be glad you can do it.” Gerry Brooks said, “Look at things not as I have to do it but I get to do it.” Such a simplistic statement that carries so much weight. Got to mow the lawn on a hot summer day be glad you get to do it. You have a lawn to mow, a house that has a lawn, and the money to buy a mower! So be glad you get to mow the lawn. Gonna try and apply this to a dentist visit.

I am still mad about the Jack’s chicken fingers’ fiasco (my new favorite word). Well, I found the receipt when I was cleaning out my purse and the receipt said 1 ranch cup, 1 bbq sauce cup, and add 2 honey mustard. That wasn’t even the right receipt for our order and our bag had four ranch cups in it…so two orders were messed up. I’ve decided they cannot read or don’t care enough to please the customer. When you are dealing with grandchildren, the sauce can make or break the deal. Okay, I’m over it now but I’ll forever hold up the pick-up line checking every thing about my order, if I ever go back.

Been enjoying this glorious morning pondering on the porch swing watching the birds and running the squirrels, Fatty and Brownie, off the bird feeders. I finally gave up and let my squirrel friends enjoy the seeds for a little while before I greased the poles again. I’m out of bagels so I just drank a cup of coffee for breakfast and watched the mockingbirds irritate the neighborhood hawk. He circles the neighborhood finally resting on a high oak limb but the mockingbirds persist even when he’s perched on a tree limb.

Did a little research and found out this bird behavior is called mobbing, a defensive behavior to harass and drive away larger predators. Mockingbirds, despite their small size compared to hawks, are known for their aggressive mobbing behavior, swooping down on a hawk, diving at it, screeching loud calls to intimidate and harass it. They’ve been mobbing the hawk for a while this morning. I thought it was the hawk screeching but now I think it was the mockingbirds. Don’t know why the hawk is so passive.

The sky is so pretty, looks like a summer sunny day illustration in a child’s picture book — bright yellow sun, deep blue sky, pristine white clouds. Father Sky did a great job with his sky canvas today. Hope Mother Nature is preparing her paint palette with some beautiful watercolors for the sunset pageant tonight. The sun is a slowly sinking reddish-yellow ball of fire now. Father Sky is going to get scorched walking her down the runway.

I love cucumbers and couldn’t wait to eat one in a salad for a late lunch yesterday. It was delicious. I picked two more and cut them up and put them in a Mason jar with vinegar and sugar. While I was cutting up the cucumbers, I started wondering how I could relate our lives to a tossed salad with God as the salad dressing. Been pondering on this since yesterday. Just can’t get these thoughts to come out correctly.

We all make our green salads differently and some of us don’t use salad dressing. We create our tossed salads in a million different ways with a million different ingredients. Sometimes we just get a bowl and throw in what’s available. Sometimes it’s spinach and spring mix, sometimes iceberg, sometimes romaine. I like beets and crumbled blue cheese in mine, cucumbers and onions and carrots, mostly tossed with zesty Italian dressing, sometimes ranch dressing. Some of us cut the vegetables in small pieces, others cut them in chunks. I don’t always have lot of things for my salad but I always have lettuce and salad dressing. We add everything together and the differences in the ingredients add taste to the salad.

God has created us and placed us on this earth with a mixture of all kinds and colors of people. We accept each other’s faults and celebrate our differences. We’re all loose leaf lettuce resting together in the big salad bowl of Earth and God is pouring his salad dressing on us. God doesn’t need a lot of different things from our life’s salad, just the assurance of our love and faith in him.

To live a Christian life we need to saturate ever part of our lives with God’s teachings like a delicious salad dressing coats the lettuce leaves. God complements us and we complement each other. He tosses us with love and grace and the Holy Spirit. It’s our job to spread his dressing around.

“We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables — the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers — to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.” Jane Elliot