Clearly God Grades On a Curve

("Eye of God", 2018, original encaustic mixed media - wax, pigments and mirror) Clearly God Grades On a Curve After several hours of working hard finishing up siding a small sheep shed, before winter comes and the cold winds blow, I lay in the warm bath, seduced to the edge of sleep by two sips of beer. I’m roused by a rousing motivational speech delivered apparently to all the minions within my body-mind. And like Whitman, it seems the multitudes I contain are vast. Workers, common laborers and skilled, designers, engineers, and inspectors, critics, loafers, the assorted homeless bums and burnt out hippies fried by one too many trips to who knows where, seeking who knows what… Anyway, the speech I remember, the part that woke me, was the simple affirmation that they’d all earned, “An A for effort!” And laying there half submerged nursing my sore joints and tired limbs, I realized with the calm assurance of the mystic, that clearly God grades on a curve. (9/9/23)