Your Sentinel What I am and what I am not, plus some notes, 200821

I am not a good Buddhist because I eat animal flesh. I am a Christian as best as I can be. I follow the teachings of both religons as I can. The teachings are very similar except Jesus proclaimed "I am God," Bhudda said I am merely a man pointing at the moon. Still there are billions of followers for both men.

I awakened at 407 am this morning. The first thing that occurred in my brain was this:
"Cats are fighting behind the seafood store.
Waiting for scraps that hit the cutting room floor"
I could not get that off my mind until I figured out what it meant.
Now I have it; we say that America is the richest country in the world. I suppose that could be true. The thing is that most of the wealth is in the hands of the top 1%. How many millions of working people here are cats fighting behind the seafood store for the scraps that hit the cutting room floor? I know we have a middle class that while much smaller in numbers than it once was, the numbers of working poor are far greater than ever.

I was calling to a place to pay a bill this morning. I tried to pay through the frustrating automatic payment routine and kept hitting dead ends so I waited to get a real person on my phone. I started out as number 8 on the waiting list to talk to a real person. Later I was number 7, and then jumped to number 1. That made me happy because there was at no time that I was number 2. Anyone would be happier to be a number 1 than a number 2. You older folks will get that little attempt at a joke.