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ARE WE FROG SOUP

Frogs were not my favorite critters, because I could always remember the Frog on the Buster Brown show--before your time you say! Well, Buster Browns were children's shoes, and they had their own TV show with a Frog that used to go in this deep gruff voice, " Hiya Hiya Hiya kids." He kind of scared me.

Later in life, while living up in the country--not all of New York is Manhattan Island, though some may think so--I found that, if you put a frog on his back and stroked his underbelly from the smallest leap frogger to the biggest toad (thank God there were no poisonous one's around), the frog would become hypnotized and fall asleep. And that works its way to my belief in a story that I heard years and years later and wanted to put up here for some time, because it relates to our acceptance of things that we probably should not. The story goes like this:

If you put a frog in boiling water, he will do everything in his power to get the heck out of the pot he is in. But, if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and very gradually raise the temperature, the frog will be lulled to sleep and die. Think about it the next time you see that ad on TV for your favorite junk food, reach that hand out for a cigarette or don't react to the deaths you see on TV.

What are we focusing on, paying attention to and accepting in our lives, if the latest philosophical premise is true--that the universe will provide for us whatever we focus are attention on. I heard it said recently that Mother Theresa, whom I know was not free herself from political ties--would not go to an antiwar rally, which she was invited to and made the statement to invite her when there was a peace rally. She did not want to be anti anything. She was in a real sense pro-life in all ways and not just the ones that fit her political vendettas and proclivities.

If what we are asleep to and what we are willing to be awake to is determined by how we wish to manipulate the world, what kind of soup are we creating together from our mutual focus?

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