Take the matter as you find it ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrised; do not doubt that your mental stomach - if you have such a thing - is strong as an ostrich's; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation; close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob.

After all, when 'the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become' He resolved to 'wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created ? and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground ? for I regret that I have made them' (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.

Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being Godlike".

We're ostriches and the whole world is sand.

I had a dream about you. You were an escalator, and I was a flight of stairs. You thought I was a Luddite, and I thought I was as ostrich, because I hadn't figured out how to put the fly in flight. One day you broke down, and then you saw that you and I weren't so different after all.