Omens and portents.

I have this continuous feeling of expectation these days.  Its not excitement so much as a lump in my throat just waiting to turn into mourning.  I feel like something bad is about to happen.

When my parents were in their last year on earth, a huge owl flew almost into my windshield while I was driving to see them.  Huge--like wings covering the entire windshield, at me, as in full frontal with me hitting the brakes just as it changed the pitch of its flight to miss hitting the car--missed colliding by less than 12 inches.
It was ominous.  My brain returned to that moment many times after that.  I don't know that I had ever seen an owl outside of a zoo until that night.

These days, that lump in the throat, mourning is coming, feeling is almost constant.

I feel it when another unarmed person is shot.
I feel it when a sniper is hunting police officers.
I feel it when our congress cares only for their party's concerns.
I feel it when the whole election process--from the rigging primaries to gerrymandering to voter ID laws make it obvious that most of us are not part of the political process--we have been systematically shut out.
I feel it when children are fed lead in their water via a crumbling infrastructure--while families (think fortune 400)  possess more wealth than countries like Bangladesh or Somalia or even Russia, and they are getting tax-breaks.
I feel it when glacier ice that has been continuously frozen for at least 30,000 years, thaws and causes landslides and outbreaks of anthrax and loss of animal habitat.
I feel it when a person running for president of a country with a lot of nuclear weapons asks "why can't we just nuke 'em".
I feel it when 1000 acres of trees burn and the animals that lived in those trees burned because someone threw their lit cigarette butt out of their car window because they didn't want to dirty their ashtray.
I feel it when 400 year old cities are destroyed by weather--for the first time.
I feel it when people driving  $30,000 cars complain about homeless people being given $30,000 houses to live in.
I feel it when young people go to prison for life for nonviolent crimes but wealthy people that hurt people are given community service and second and third chances.

Are all these things omens?  Do they portend our future?  Maybe.

A lot of people hope for the end of days.  They want to go to heaven.  They want peace and plenty.

How can people be so awful to each other, so greedy, so acquisitive at the expense of others--both human and nonhuman and then think that they want the world to end so they can live a better life.

Everyone needs to take their foot off the neck of whoever or whatever life form they see as less important than themselves and ask themselves "how are we alike".

I think that these people that hate everyone and everything that is not like them in appearance and belief are really delusional if think that hoping for the end so they can get their reward is ever going to take them to heaven.

If they want to live in a place of peace and plenty, they need to work toward that here.

Start with the golden rule--and consider the other species when you do.

Me--I'm already missing the bees.