The air was crisp and the temperature in single digits Fahrenheit as I walked my dog Sammy today.
The clouds bunched up across the sky like an angry sea.
The sun, more white than yellow, tried to push through, but the soup is thick.
I felt my heavenly God while walking today. A most gracious advocate all around me. I feel the ones I’ve lost watching me.
I feel connected to God, to my ancestors and lost friends and family, but I feel increasingly estranged from the now. Present, but divorcing from most of what life tells me is of most importance.
Politics: Eight years of my life I served a government that I see as corrupt to its core. Both side, both parties, all of it. Absolute power corrupted, absolutely. Blessed be the ones who are not corrupt and trying to bring about change. Never has a job been more futile.
Super Bowl: gambling and advertisement dollars, self important talking heads telling me how lucky I should feel for the honor of watching a game I don’t even like. Bad Bunny? Kid Rock? Childish nonsense from a nuclear power. Everything wrong with America in a three hour window.
Popular Culture: apparently dead, and if not dead, on life support. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, dead. Where have you gone Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Charleston Heston, Milan Kundera, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Mark Hollis, Paul Kantner and Levon Helm. Men in suits with hats. Elegant women. Authors that fed the soul. Musicians that oozed authentic. Dead.
Nihilistic? Far from it. I pray for the world as I’m sure millions of others do.
Resigned. As I approach the final act in my life I feel a sense of hopelessness for humanity. What have we learned since the the Middle Ages? Sure there have been advances, but are we enlightened?
Do you feel enlightened?
Does the polarization of our politics, our media, our inability to agree on gender, climate changes or the rule of law portend to deeper divisions?
When in doubt, remember this is transitory. An illusion of what matters.
From the sky, returning as he left. The fault line below the mount of olives splits open. The clouds part. The alpha and the omega.
O’ come, O’ come Emmanuel.
