Imagine

I remember I was still in high school when the song Imagine hit the charts. My boyfriend (my present-day husband) and I got into a rather heated discussion over the song... as I felt John Lennon made an excellet point that the world would be better off without "religion"and he felt that the song was simply sacreligious.

Funny, I was discussing Ireland's IRA this morning with my daughter and son-in-law, how people often blame their altercations on religion, but that they simply use religion to identify the British from the Irish, and it was not about being Catholic (Irish) or Protestant (Church of England-British), it was about British occupation in Ireland.

I will agree there are many problems with "religion" but I no longer believe the problem lies in the religion of man. Let me take a few points from the song, Imagine.

Imagine all the people living for today. Don't they already? As I recall, Aesop was not particulary a religious man, but even Aesop knew one could not live his life without regard for tomorrow, as was inferred in the parable of the ant and the grasshopper. I realize that many religions reach beyond the realms of sound judgment, but it is, I belive a problem of man, and not one of religious persuasion that drives zealots to extremism and oppressors to oppression. Just listen to NPR discuss the Chinese government and the absence of human rights to get a good idea of what government is like that rules from the perspective of practical law outside of God(s).

Imagine there's no country and no religion too. I was very young when I was so impressed with this song and I didn't really understand people. People are pack animals. If it's not about OUR God, then it's OUR Country or OUR Baseball Team or OUR Rugby Team: OUR School; OUR Political Party; OUR Skin Color or OUR Hair Color or OUR Hair Length, OUR Sex, OUR Preferences; OUR Cool Friends, OUR Educated Bookworms or OUR Bucolic Buffalos. We're cliquish; we bond and then we look to solidfy that bond by diminishing the value of anyone who opposes it. We like to define ourselves beyond the general brotherhood of man and when we create a faction, we create a friction... and eventually a friction leads to an altercation. I remember I was reading about the war between Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu tribes. I was trying to research what was going on with them. Their wars are over class differences. The Tutsis are Cattle ranchers and the Hutu are Farmers and the fight is basically over the better use of the land and the perception of status of cattlemen over lowly dirt farmers. The death toll over the years is incomprehensible and they use their government to further the bloodshed. No country! No religion! We don't need it. We're going to choose a side, with or without God.

Imagine no possessions I wonder if he can? 22 million dollar estate back in 1980. Heh, not exactly tent city. Maybe He and Yoko wouldn't mind if everyone was as rich as they were (although it's a funny thing about most rich folks, they don't really feel that way) but I rather doubt they'd give up everything to live in a duplex so the people in Bangladesh could eat 3 squares a day and have a duplex too--not to cast aspersions on their character. Present company excepted, I think most people are not willing to do that and quite frankly, I have yet to see a single government in existence that was "for the people." America came closer to it than most in history, once upon a time, but even so, you would not call it altruistic.

So, yeah, I would say he was a dreamer... and he's not the only one. But I don't smoke pot and to lend any credence to the practicality of that song, you would have to be wasted.

I mean, seriously.

The Frog With No Hair

There once was a lovely green frog that lived on the third lily pad to the left of the fountain just outside the reach of the waterfall but in perfect proximity to reap its soft mist. She loved the way the sunlight filtered through the fountain spray in rainbows and glistening diamonds in the afternoon sunlight and the sound of the Mockingbird's song after it bathed in its spray. She liked to sit on her pad and watch the people walk around the lake.

After a while, she began to notice that everyone had hair. Even the dogs on a leash, why even the Mockingbird had feathers and she suddenly began to wish she also had some beautiful hair. She became very sad and began to suffer a great deal of embarrassment at her lack of hair. And as people gazed into the sunlit fountain each afternoon, she imagined they were looking at the little bald frog sitting on the third lily pad to the left of the fountain.

One day, a little girl dropped her dolly into the fountain and although she wailed ruefully, her mother never took any notice of her dolly laid on the bottom of the fountain pool.

Now, from the bottom of the fountain pool, even this abandoned dolly, with her golden locks of hair, mocked the poor little bald frog on her place of torment.
Late one night, as the frog was staring into the miserable reflection the pool cast back at her saw some odd stringy mass bobbing in the water. She looked over at the little dolly on the bottom of the fountain pool and saw that she was now bald and her beautiful hair had floated up to her lily pad in gratuitous splendor. Carefully she lifted it out of the water and smoothed it out as best as she could and when it was dry, she lifted it up and arranged it carefully on her head and smiled back at the bald dolly laid on the bottom of the fountain pool.

She could hardly wait for the morning to bring its first visitors to the fountain's edge to display her beautiful hair to the public but the first child that walked by shot out its chubby little finger and bellowed out a shriek of laughter. It drew the attention of the entire crowd and soon everyone in the park was drawn over to see the frog in a wig and they all began laughing at her.

Distressed she glanced down at the bald dolly laid on the bottom of the fountain pool and she thought sure she saw a tear in the dolly's eye for her lovely hair sat on the head of a silly green frog way up on a lily pad beyond her reach.

The little green frog saw her reflection in the pool, and heard the shrieks of laughter coming from the crowds of people gathered around to see the bald frog in a wig. Humiliated, she leapt from her pad into the water where she stayed under the tangle of lily pad roots until the crowds finally dispersed and as the evening drew into dusk, she made her way down to the dolly and carefully placed its wig back on its head and lifted her back out of the fountain to await her little girl to come back and reclaim her.

Before noon the following day, the dolly's little girl found her and carried her happily away and the talk of the frog in the wig had died to an occasional bantering of remarks but no one really took notice of a lovely green frog sitting on the third pad to the left of the fountain in the glistening mist of rainbows and diamonds and that was just the way she wanted it.