Happy Year Of The Sheep! Or sheep-like animal of your choice.
Google had what looked like a ram by their name that day last week. “Goat” has been tossed around too. And people love lambs.
We’ll be delivering a baby boy this Summer. A Chinese friend explained that a Summer Sheep Year baby is good because sheep have plenty to eat during the Summer. So some of this is logical.
To the Christian mind, confusing a sheep for a goat wouldn’t seem likely.
One appeal of the Bible for some people is that one thinks one might find within it, if not the meaning of life, maybe a vital clue to what one can expect from the afterlife.
Jesus addressed the subject directly in his description of the final judgment. The sheep merrily go off to Paradise. The goats all go downstairs.
He describes the difference between the two. The sheep helped people out. The goats did not.
Perplexingly, both sheep and goats are oblivious and incredulous. Neither group is clear on what they did to their credit or their shame, and need to have it spelled out for them.
Each group is surprised that Jesus says they helped Him out all those times, in all those ways; that they snubbed Him all those times in all those ways.
How difficult for the rich to get into Heaven!
Of course, it can be. For some, the status of wealth centers on making distinctions and passing judgments: who are one’s peers in society, in temperament, in the worth of respective accomplishments.
Sometimes, those with cannot help out those without, because those with barely have enough and live in fear of losing what they have. We have our few bucks toward the small luxuries of life, and we have our street cred that knows we can’t believe everything we hear from those who will make a claim or tell a story to get a dollar.
Blessed, the poor in spirit, whose is the kingdom of Heaven.
A story aired recently about a guy who gave a street person $100 or some such amount, and followed him to see what he did with it. The man went into a store, bought some groceries, and shared it with some friends. His celebrity benefactor was astounded by the gesture, amazed that this man didn’t just live on an island where only one man lives, who has no friends and no sense of society.
That the celebrity wasn’t embarrassed by his own cynicism– really weird.
Blessed, those who do not make false distinctions about who and who is not worthy of a simple gesture of humanity.
Blessed, those who are not ashamed to be brothers and sisters to those who suffer through the most trying circumstances, who bear the heaviest burdens.
Blessed, those who see their own reflection in any other person, who treat others as they would like to be treated themselves.
Blessed, those who see there are no enemies, foreigners, or strangers among the sometimes-wayward children of God.

An only dog is a lonely dog, an alien among the human species.
We almost expect them to read our minds, to know what we want them to do and not do. Constantly surprised we are that they have so little grasp of common sense.
How do they not know that silently walking up and lying at our feet when we are sitting down is a bad idea?
We are supposed to know the dog is there so we won’t trip over the dog. So nobody gets hurt.
A dog’s constant task is to determine who in the house is doing the most interesting thing, and participate. With two adults and a 2-year-old in the house, that’s exhausting.
The male adult, the garbage Sherpa, is constantly taking trash outside. If anyone goes outside, the dog wants to go. If someone is carrying smelly stuff around, the dog is all over that. If a person is taking smelly stuff outside, it could be the best part of the dog’s day.
If an adult is cooking, or eating, that could be the highlight of the day. Just let that person drop their hand with any type of food on it, and one lick of a tongue takes care of that.
If a child is running around with any kind of toy, obviously the child wants the dog to give chase and jump at the toy.
If someone is sitting, or lying on the floor, that means he or she wants the dog’s company.
Inconceivable, the idea that we do not want the dog alongside us, in front of us, behind us, at every moment.
Humans are all hands. Instead of fingers, dogs have sharp teeth to handle their worlds, which largely consist of things with no purpose other than to be shredded by a dog.
Dogs are as sentimental a creature as exists, toward people, but they are sentimental toward few things. A favorite hat? Nothing more to a dog than anything else the master brings home from the pet store.
Yet, these humans do not reciprocate. They do not try to eat the dog’s food, or lick the dog’s face and paws at every chance, or follow the dog everywhere he goes.
A dog might live in constant doubt of his identity, except that, looking out the window, or going outside, it’s never long until another dog walks past, until somewhere nearby, a dog barks or howls. The dog then knows that he is not alone. More of his type are in much the same situations.
With a super powerful nose, the dog can smell the presence of other dogs.
He sees another dog, who responds with the same intense excitement at the appearance of another of his kind. When they meet, they each know what to do, while the humans look upon the meeting with the same bemused incredulity that the dog feels practically all day every day at these people who say they want him around, but seem to have so little idea of a dog’s understanding of basic dignity.
To be man’s best friend might seem ennobling to us, but it’s a hard thing.

People love a good mystery, they will say– the mysterious stranger with the shadowy past, the tight-lipped acquaintance of many secrets. “What do they have in their medicine cabinet?” we wonder in friends’ bathrooms.
Men tend not to find each other mysterious. We don’t spend much time thinking about hidden messages and unspoken intentions. We tend to assume that we can take each other at face value.
As a father of a two-year-old son, my son, for all his uniqueness and individuality, isn’t an inscrutable mystery to me. The fact that he is a male explains a lot. When he pounds on things and throws things and runs around uncontrollably, screaming for no apparent reason, that all makes sense to me. Kicking and throwing balls, all that physicality doesn’t concern me in the least. Jumping off chairs and sofas, all the things he does that cause people to say, “Be careful! That’s dangerous!” I can relate. If I tell him, “You’ll hurt yourself,” I know that just makes him all the more determined, because a boy is supposed to hurt himself and not shy away from daring, dangerous, precocious feats.
The women in his life don’t seem to have that intuitive connection with him.
My wife and I might have a baby girl. If we do, I thoroughly expect to be at something of a loss in helping that child navigate through childhood and life, because I know nothing about being a little girl.
I’d love to have a girl, because I’d love my wife to have that intuitive connection with her that I share with my son.
We are mysterious, we men. Not only do we like to watch sports on TV, everything from football to golf, we even like to listen to the broadcasters narration of the events.
Sometimes we have to watch games that become such civic events that even casual fans are interested enough to sit down with the devotees.
Men are baffled that some people would rather have their ordinary conversations while the game is on than listen to the game, while the casual fans seem baffled that we would prefer to listen to the expert analysts than listen to our friends’ uninformed commentary, questions, and unrelated conversations.
Each side can criticize the other, but in matters of professional sports, the casual fan would do well to be mature and respect the experience preferred by the true believers, as we would all do well to respect the mystery presented to us by the inexplicable other– i.e., the opposite gender.
We can talk during the commercials.

Ever wake up screaming in the middle of the night?
A figure of speech, but how else do you describe seeing the same catastrophe every time you open your eyes when you wake up at night, the same thing you see over and over all day long? The same unbelievable thing?
Remember last Summer when Brazil hosted the World Cup, and Germany destroyed them? Millions of Brazilians who saw that woke up screaming in the middle of the night, and some probably still do, and always will.
Remember the Red Sox in the World Series when that ball went unconscionably rolling through Bill Buckner’s legs? The people who woke up screaming in the middle of the night remembering that will still remember that.
When the Packers lost to the Seahawks in the NFC Conference Championship, scenes from that were and are the stuff of nightmares all throughout Wisconsin and the Packers Nation.
An old friend told me about how his teeth were so rotten that once he woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming– his own– because his teeth hurt so bad.
That most ill-advised pass in the last minute of the Super Bowl…. Had the football gods been asleep as Carson Palmer got hurt and the Cardinals lost the division lead, as the Seahawks rallied most improbably against the Packers and the Patriots, not waking up until the last minute of the Super Bowl, and then realized that one of the Seahawks stars had exhibited extremely poor sportsmanship against #24 on the Patriots, and a catch had been made that defied all logic, chance, or reason, and the gods sent a demon into the mind of the offensive coordinator or whoever to call an insane play that never should have been called when the perfect running back for the job was just waiting with three chances to hammer the ball in from a yard out for a winning touchdown, a demon with an ally who caused the golden boy quarterback to throw a pass that never should have been thrown?
Ever sit by yourself all night in a dark room in a rocking chair as your mind tries to wrap itself around the greatest sports catastrophe Seattle has ever seen?
Yes.
Let us never speak of this again.