This Buds for YOU!

Tags

blogging, gratitude, Thanksgiving

Well, in thinking over all the things I have to be grateful about from this past year, one stands out above all others. Like Time’s “YOU” person of the year, YOU indeed are something I’m most grateful for.

I’ve moved, just recently, to thinking of myself as a writer, not “just” a blogger, though I’m not sure there is a lot of difference. The point is, I have come to see that I have a gift, one that I was mostly unaware of. Sure, I knew I could do good technical writing, but I had no idea I could write with a modicum of wit and satire.

In any event, I would surely not have realized it, had it not been for you, who read this blog with some regularity. Some of you have been with me from the start, and some of you are very recent additions to this family of thinkers. Each and every one of you is important to me, and I value your visits. Some of you comment regularly, and some not at all. Those of you whom I don’t know because of that fact, I value just as much.

I recall  the beginning of this blog in March of 2008, when I was ecstatic to have a hundred readers a week. That slowly, and I do mean, tortuously so, crept up literally one by one it seemed. In a year’s time, I had around 30,000 visitors. Then things veritably took off like a rocket.

Today, I often flirt with 1,000 visitors a day, and we have now been viewed by 190 separate countries. And, most countries have multiple visits. We have lots of friends stopping by from Canada and the UK of course, but Germany and Italy, India and Australia, the Philippines and Brazil are big followers. I have no clue if they are expatriates from the US or if some foreigners think I reflect a certain point of view in America which they find important.

You, with your utter support, which has always been unconditional in its tone, have allowed me to grow as a writer, pushing my envelope and exploring my talent. I am not yet sure what God wishes me to do with this talent, but I am thrilled to be learning my craft. There have been times when I wondered if my voice was heard, and you have always said yes, and encouraged me onward.

Of unspeakable value have been those of you who also blog. Your reasons for blogging may be similar to mine, or entirely different. You may blog on similar topics, or ones utterly foreign to me. Yet I have found so much wisdom and humor, so much passion that it has pushed me to work harder and think deeper at every turn.

There are so many to thank, I know not where to start frankly. On any given day, I can be completely transfixed by one or more of you. You have been my teachers, some of you. Some of you know more about writing that I can ever acquire. Many of you challenge my opinions, and tease me out of simplistic conclusions.

I am always a bit crestfallen when I read a comment from a new visitor and discover they don’t have a blog. For that is a missed opportunity to engage with a new person, a person full of ideas and dreams, who undoubtedly has much to offer us all. I can only hope they continue commenting so I can get to know them a bit better.

There are those that say that Internet “chatting” and all our Facebooking, Myspacing, and such, create false relationships. They are ways of avoiding real life and real people. That can be the case, but I don’t think it has to be. I think many of us care quite deeply about each other, and we are genuinely concerned with the ups and downs of each other’s lives. I make no apologies for my blogging friends, they are as real to me as the one’s I meet face to face.

The Internet remains the best place for international conversation on the issues of our day. Or the interests of our lives. We can share, discuss, argue, reject, embrace, and modify ideas on any subject under the sun. We can learn, in a nut shell. No doubt we must be careful in our sourcing, and in our evaluating of the information we acquire this way, but that is to say no more than we must do the same as to books and magazines and TV.

I hope that each and every one of you has a marvelous new year. Some of you are struggling as we look to this new dawn. Some will be mourning, some will be in fear. Some will be holding on as tightly as they know how, to Jesus. Some of you will be celebrating, and are full of hope. Some of you are young and full of expectation, some of you are old and full of remembrance while savoring the moment. Most of us are somewhere in between.

We travel the world, or our own small plots of land. We are all together, like it or not on this small blue ball traveling in the outskirts of a fairly nondescript galaxy. We sink or swim together, like it or not as well. I thank you for participating in this “community of ideas” and look forward to more conversation in the year to come.

Blessings, and Happy New YEAR!

Reflectively Yours

Tags

essay, evaluations, God, gratitude, life, measuring, New years resolutions

We have been talking of late about our back looking propensity. And we have established good and intelligent reasons for doing so. In a sense, we review the past in some attempt to give meaning to the present. It gives contextuality to our “now.”

Yet, we do more than just engage with the past in order to discern lessons for the future and to give concreteness to the present. We also look back in some attempt to measure.

What do I mean? I mean that we are prone, in much of our lives to measure things. We measure time surely, we measure our progress. We measure our fullness of anything with respect to what others have. We count, and we project into the future. At this pace, we will be . . . .next Tuesday.

Measure twice, count once. A good thing to remember.

The counting of things is done in some sense to define “progress.” We like to think that we have made some, week to week, month to month. But we especially evaluate and measure at year’s end.

Some of us are so dedicated to self-punishment that we actually keep a copy of our “resolutions” to re-examine at year’s end. Most of us are not so masochistic as that. But we recall at least the major ones.

So we measure our weight loss, the reduction of our “debt”, the quantity of books read, the success of that new Yoga class. We feel alternately, good or bad, depending on how we “measure” up.

We make excuses, vow to do better, rethink, reword, rewrite all such things again. We add, subtract, multiply and divide. Momentarily depressed by our utter lack of success, we reconfigure and regain our optimism with bold new ways of approaching our resolutions for the coming year.

Even when we reject the entire concept of resolutions, we are not immune. We still reflect and grade ourselves in some fashion for our accomplishments or lack of  same. We plan and devise a better strategy for the coming year.

And I’m not quite sure why we do so. It seems that we as humans need some marker to identify that we have “grown” in some way. We believe in God, those of us who do, yet, we are not satisfied to simply “do” living. We must evaluate and judge our living. As if, (don’t tell) we might not quite believe that immortality awaits us, and we need to make some showing to the world that we mattered.

There, I said it. We need and want to matter in the world, because it may be all we have. And so we attempt to measure out our successes or failures as if this all goes down into some impossibly long eulogy to be delivered at our death.

Here lies Sherry Peyton, who at age 1 and 1/2 mastered the art of spoon and pooping in a receptacle. At age 4, she tied her shoes.  . . . at 59, she knitted a sweater, and learned to make Peking (Beijing?) duck.”

Yet, we profess, and assert that we do believe. We look about us at the grandeur of the world (those places unsullied by human trashing at least) and we see the clear finger of God. We notice the flora and fauna and gasp in delight, knowing that, some wonderfully gracious transcendent power by His word uttered, set all in motion.

We see the dance of galaxies, and the Northern Lights, tears appear as we gaze upon beauty so haunting and so perfect, moments so tender and precious that we choke momentarily in wonder. We KNOW in a way that is inexplicable and far to holy to commit to mere words.

In frail fleeting seconds we KNOW, and then return to the realities of carpooling and flu bugs, and car payments and arthritis. And  so we count, and measure, and evaluate, and judge, and we hope it means something in the end to us, to them, to those strangers who will buy our pathetic belongings at auctions. I see my sewing machine in a box on the floor of a garage, carried off by a bidder for 4 bucks. My life is sold off for a few hundred dollars.

Is it enough? Surely, for these things are but stuff. We live on in the minds of loved ones, family and friends. They are mindful of our measuring. For they measure too.

Better, I think that we strive to not count, but rather give thanks. That we peruse that history we have built and thank our lucky stars (so dramatically created of Godstuff) that we had homes and loved ones. We saw the Grand Canyon, we reveled in Mozart’s 40th symphony. We held a grandchild and caressed a lover. We tasted caviar, and sipped a good champagne once. We saw a puppy being born, and saw an eagle soar. We read Thomas Merton, and laughed at Erma Bombeck.

Give thanks as these last moments of 2009 drift by. We are alive, we have minds to think with, and hands to work with and feet to travel upon. We have loved ones, friends, and pets. We have eyes to see a quiet beauty everywhere we look, if we but look, carefully. Give thanks, and then do it some more. We are more full that we imagine with that which we should be grateful for.

Amen.

RE-Inventing the Past Tomorrow

Tags

end of year, life in the meadow, New Years, resolutions, retrospectives, top ten lists

A few days ago, I wrote about how we humans were a behind looking kinda people. No better proof of that exists than in this mystical time between Christmas and the New Year.

We, in a word, are obsessed with what has gone before us. We revel in it, we concoct all kinds of cute categories and lists, all in an attempt to “remember” what we have just endured experienced in the last twelve months.

Some of it, no doubt, makes some sense. We are called to shop in “year end sales” devoted to better the bottom line of department stores and drug stores alike. Reduce that inventory so we can concentrate on spring clothes, spring perfumes, spring Tide. And on those big items, the allure is, “no interest until April 2011!” So come on down!

One would think that we would all be suitably tapped out after the Christmas crunch, but no, the commercial storehouses of product, seem to think we are all hoarding cash. And, given the use of “money” gifts (the joy of the lazy shopper!), perhaps they are right. I don’t know, I don’t engage in all that crap. (Although we are in the market for a new vacuum. They don’t last long here in the meadow with all the animal hair. Looking for one without a lot of twists and turns in the “hose” where all the gunk clogs up–the Contrarian is an expert at snaking out the hose–just in case you needed to know–but that’s a whole other topic.)

Anyway, the other thing we do a ton of is list stuff. The top ten of everything seems most popular, though a close second is the “best”, “worst”, “biggest”, “smallest” anything under the sun categories.

Trapsing around the blogosphere, one can find top ten lists for “political stories of the year,” and “craziest blowhearts,” “best songs,” “best books,” and the list, well is inexhaustible. Take your favorite subject, and sure enough, somebody wants to organize it into a list of sorts to judge it against the mass of material generated in 2009.

What we learn from all this, is that while we were living, a lot of stuff happened. Stuff we forgot, as we wasted precious minutes and hours paying bills, and hustling kids to soccer practice. People died. We remembered them when we first heard, but goodness, we have let it slip our minds in the intervening months. We need to remember this.

Some of all this we find hilarious. I mean who doesn’t enjoy compiling a list of the top ten nutsoids of the year? The choices are phenomenonaly long–Sarah, and Rush, and Michelle (two of them), Sean and Billy (two of them) and Steven, and, well, not enough paper in the world to list them all. To pick only ten seems cruel indeed.

Sometimes we flip it into an award. The athlete of the decade kinda thing. The best TV show, the best movie (no wait, that’s the Academy Awards), best book, best car. Award ’em the Best in show award and put that in your trophy case. Another on the way next year and you will be forgotten anyway.

Retrospectives are catchalls, not truly top ten lists, but the “year in review” kinda thing. Again, it’s important to remember all this stuff. Some of it, we would rather not, but of course, that can doom us to repeat it. Don’t forget. So we dutifully listen and ooh and ahh, and whisper, “gosh I forgot all about that!”

I think we are to gain some kind of prospective from our retrospecting ways. I’m not quite sure, but I suspect we are. We’re supposed to place our own troubles in the mix and find them “not so bad” by comparison. Heck I can do that by watching soaps for a week.  Is there some synthetis that can be accomplished by juxtaposing all this “old news?”  Perhaps.

We are not through yet though, for we now come to “resolutions” those funny/serious attempts we are called upon to engage in to “change our ways” and “improve” ourselves. We will be leaner, and not so meaner. We will be smarter and more well read. We will be attentive, and listen to more “high brow” crap so we sound smarter at the watercooler.

We will stretch our minds, our bodies and our psyches with new challenges. We will develop patience, fortitude, calmness. We will discriminate among choices for recreation. We will spend less time on TV and computers, and more with books and exercise. We will write more, and speak less. We will listen, absorb, cook from scratch, develop new hobbies, recycle, repair, redecorate, reorient, repackage, rethink, rework, and regroup.

We really really will. Until life catches up and we let it go this week, and then another, and then, whoa, it is December again, and we REmember what we have forgotten since January. Then we do it all over again, with more resolve, we are sure, than last year.

We are REsilient. In fact, I think I’ll make a list of RE words and all that I can RE next year. My first decision: To REsurrect my journeling so I can avoid everyone else’s REtrospective and REread my own.

A Convenient Truth

Tags

church, empathy, faith, God, joy, paradox, worship

A number of things have been rattling round the old noggin the past day or so, and let me try to set them down in some coherent form. Try is the operative word here.

I’m reminded that coherence depends on the audience. To an atheist, much of what I might be saying would be not so clear. As I’ve said in the past, proselytizing has a major draw back. There is no “logical” fool proof “proof” of that which is offered as truth, one sees the truth because one believes. If one doesn’t, other explanations make as much sense.

All I can say, frankly, is that I’ll do the best I can to ‘splain what I mean, but if it’s not convincing, don’t blame me. Faith is not subject to cold hard facts as they say, which prompts the average atheist to exclaim in the best church lady voice, “How con VEEEE nient for you.”

 It’s a well known fact that new converts are exuberant and suffer from saint complexes. They are “excessively” in love with their new faith and with their new God. This generally wears off in time, and church leaders are well versed in slowing down such people before they get into ministry and church activities way over their heads, only to find that there is still “life” out there to be lived.

I suppose the same is true when one joins another faith tradition. As  a new Roman Catholic, I suffered or enjoyed, your choice, the traditional, more Catholic than the Pope, attitude. In time, it subsided. Mass became the norm it is for most, an obligation, which one can take seriously or ignore as one is wont to do.

I’ve been an Episcopalian for nearly a year and a half, and frankly, my holier than thou period seems to be getting more so than less. I’m inclined in some manner, to believe it has a lot to do with my particular church. It is something special, and I cannot explain it adequately. All I know is that forces have come to play in one place and time to bring together an extraordinary array of people who seem in some amazing way to uplift and uphold each other in ways that infuse us all with deeply felt awe and awareness that we are a very special congregation.

With each passing week, I find myself more drawn to the liturgy of the day, more reverent in my prayer and worship, more deeply aware of the holiness of this place, these people, and my God. He fairly permeates this building, oozing love and blessing from every inch of it.

I fairly don’t know what to think of all this. It has not happened to me before in so strong a fashion.

Concomitant with this, is of course, a growing knowledge and friendship with so many individuals. With that comes an awareness of the ups and downs of others lives. I find myself learning about illnesses and losses, setbacks and triumphs of various members. I begin to know who are those who are suffering, those who are in delicate circumstances, carefully navigating new jobs, careers, life changes. I share their joys but also their sorrows.

And, the paradox of it all, is that, even in the midst of all this empathy, I feel an increasing joy. This causes a great deal of consternation to me, and I’m not sure how to feel. I mean, when a friend is suffering, how can I feel happy? How can I feel joy when I carry the burden of sadness that some of my friends are going through great difficulties?

What happens, is that I feel the shame of my own meagre complaints. I complain about wind and snow and frigid temperatures. I complain about fairly minor digestive issues. I complain about lack of funds to buy laptops and high speed connections. They are nothing in comparison to what others are living with. They would cry with joy to have such “complaints.”

So I feel this joy, that my troubles are minor in comparison, and the shame of feeling the joy.

It’s all jumbled up in some rat’s nest of complicated thought that I cannot unravel. I can only try to explain it to myself, and to you. There are no right words to describe it. Poets and prose writers do that for us. I scribble my thoughts and hope in some way that I touch a cord with others, that I explain in my faulty way what they too feel. For I never think my thinking is unique in a general sense.

As people of faith, we attempt to describe, explain, and often convince others that what we believe is real and important. We mostly fail, as it relates to the unbeliever, and I don’t argue that it should succeed. Faith comes to one who desires faith I think. It cannot be logically transferred to the mind of the unbeliever and convince them.

The bible is no more than these attempts over and over again. There is seldom a point in the bible where plain facts are stated. It is, in parts, and in total, writings that have a point of view. The stories, whether actual events, or offered to express over arching theological principles, always are persuasive. They are not neutral.

This essay too, is not logical, not neutral. It will hopefully be understood by the believer, who too has traversed this paradox of sympathy, empathy and joy, all at once. I continue to ponder. I listen carefully for God’s whispered encouragement. I look for the signs that direct me to a better understanding. Until then, I sit with my convenient truth,  on the edge of the razor, living the paradox.

Well That’s Done, One to Go

Tags

blues, Christmas, holidays, life in the meadow, New Years

The day after Christmas has always had that melancholy about it. Even as a child, there was the sense of let down, although technically I was to be the recipient of another present or two. They would usually be Avon type things, so that was not so exciting.

I guess I measure Christmas by my childhood. And oddly, or paradoxically, or ironically, as the case may be, the better your childhood Christmas, the less satisfied one often is as an adult.  I mean how can it possibly measure up?

I mean, Christmas can’t measure up to what I experienced as a child, with a pile of presents, a big family gathering, lots of games and excitement, food, and candy. And visitors galore. It was exciting right up to New Year’s Day. But, as I said, the day after Christmas is still sort of a let down.

Not so much now. Since we barely celebrate Christmas, it’s hard to be let down the next day. We did make a serious attempt in the early years of our marriage. We bought the tree, and decorated the halls with boughs of holly. We turkeyed it up with all the trimmings, and we bought each other a few gifts. Serious shopping it was. And little by little, we seemed to sense that this was wasted on us. And so we stopped.

The tree was attacked by a marauding gang of cats, with dog tails slapped at tree limbs knocking ornaments off to the floor. All the water from the tree stand was dutifully drunk by cat and dog alike, and the poor pine was soon dried out and dropping needles everywhere. Mostly the gifts were nice and thoughtful, but hardly shockingly exciting, since we bought what we needed and as much as we could afford of wanting, during the year.

The meal took the usual multiple dozen of hours to prepare and was finished in the proverbial 20 minutes of gluttony. And sleep ensued in the best tradition of the Christmas Vacation movie. It is a bit of a tradition that we watch the Griswolds on Christmas Eve. It is a poignant reminder of what we all desire–the Christmas of our dreams. And like Sparky, we usually fall far short of the mark and get all depressy.

So, as I watch poor Mr. Griswold struggle with outdoor lights and falling off the roof and a squirrel in the tree, I relate, and I learned. Back off all that “perfect” decoration and meal and gifting. In the end, it ends up being too much work for too little return.

So, we had a quiet time of it. We watched Star Wars movies during the day and evening, had a perfectly fine dinner of ham and lots of easy to make, but luxurious sides. Lots of snoozing and crocheting, and watching the birds at the feeder. No stress, no clean up of note, and most importantly, no down side the next day.

Christmas, in the secular sense, is indeed  a children’s holiday. And as adults, we sometimes slide along through the holidays on parties and such and especially, should we be parents, on the joy in our children’s eyes. If luckier still, we can move on to grandparenthood and continue to vicariously enjoy the “fun” of it all.

The rest of us, alone or with spouses or partners, whose “family” is far flung and not visiting, well, we have to make do. Reduce the expectations and reduce the depression. In truth, I felt hardly at all depressed so far during this season. Perhaps I’ve got my expectations finally low enough, I don’t know, but so far I’ve pretty nicely sailed through. I’ve enjoyed for the most part the cooking and baking, and coziness of it all. Even the weather hasn’t been so outrageous as to pull me into the depths of dark gloom.

Speaking of weather, we have been lucky once again. Yes, we got our eight inches a week plus ago, and had some serious problems as a result or in tandem with it. But this last monster storm mostly gave us rain, then politely stopped, cooled, dried and then dropped a couple of fluffy inches. No impact on our getting out at all. We have not had to suffer from two feet of snow which is sadly common in many parts of the land. We have been spared.

Still, it is early in our wintry season, and if this is December, then one must worry mightily about January and February. Still by my calculation, another week, and we are 1/3 of the way through. That’s nothing to sneeze about, and there is always the hope of the January thaw to pin one’s hopes on. That few days of, “oh Spring, you tempt me with your balmy breezes and melting ways” kinda thing. Course that always is followed by the most god-awful icy blast with snow in blizzard array known to recent history.

But that’s another story. I hope you had a tolerable Christmas. I think that’s a great word. It was tolerable. . . . meaning I could do it again without going outside and screaming my fool head off. We are toasty and cozy and the Contrarian is expecting a repeat of yesterday’s dinner. I think that’s a plan.

Headin’ toward New Year’s Eve, and shock of all shocks, we don’t “do” that either. In fact we are well in bed before that damn ball falls. The day itself? Oh I like that fine–bowl games!!! Go IOWA HAWKEYES!!!!!

Christmas Day the Next Page

Tags

Christmas, Contrarian, Essays, God, grace, Vietnam

In 1970 my friends and I were getting grossly drunk on Christmas Eve. I make no apology for that. I was in Vietnam and there was to be a Christmas Truce. Since we would have no “work” the next day, we were giving ourselves the gift of a few hours of oblivion from the tedium and trials of a never ending year. At midnight the sounds of “Silent Night” started to come over the airfield speakers, sung by the congregation of the post chapel.

Eerily, everything else became quiet. First those on guard in the bunkers (because they were more sober), and then everyone else joined in.  As the verses went on, and the words became less familiar, the unsolicited singing tapered off into murmurs. The choir finished with a beauty I can find no words to put to measure.

I have had my highs and lows, my good Christmases and bad, before and since. Still, I can think of no isolated five-minute period of my life that captures the duality of life so clearly. I have never been so acutely homesick, miserable and lonely, as in those few minutes, but I also felt a Community of Spirit larger than all others.

Love can be defined as “a joining with another, or others, in a mutual experience so powerful no words can depict it, and for which no words are needed.” I have never been in such a large group of complete understanding, as when I looked around at the faces of the five or six guys who were drinking with me. We spent a few moments in complete silence, each knowing there was no way to describe the intensity of our wants, and that while the specific wants were different, the intensity of the hunger was the same.

The turmoil between joy and sorrow is the drama of life. Without conflict there would be no prose or poetry. It is not easy to see the positive in the midst of the negative. Clouds remain clouds until a person is capable of penetrating them to find the silver lining. However, I would offer, sad stories only remain sad because the teller or the listener does not finish.

There can always be hope if we are allowed to turn the next page of life. No matter your religion, the story of the First Christmas is one of gloom if you do not read past the Day of the Cross. An innocent baby born, lives a good life and dies in pain and ridicule, because of misunderstandings and prejudice. Hardly a plot I would presume to base one of the world’s major religions on.

But our existence tells me that that story is not finished. The great gift of the Christmas story is that each of us gets to turn our own page to tomorrow.

It is hard not to think of gifts at Christmas time. I have been given many wonderful things. I am never at home unless I can quickly point to an object and say “this or that marvelous person gave it to me.” But I have been given further gifts, so portable, that if I am wise, I should never lose.

Those are moments of understanding I have felt with another. Sometimes to grand they can hardly be hinted at. Sometimes fleeting and beautiful in their smallness and words become too ugly and large.

I have seen others laugh or cry at words I have laughed or cried at while writing. I have shared a silent laugh with another over an inappropriate body noise. I have felt the comfort of another sleeping in my arms, and I know the comfort of Grace. I have the  knowledge that while I was not my best yesterday, or today, I am free to be better tomorrow.

Blessings to all.

I’m Just a Fringe Trekkie

Tags

astronomy, Carl Sagan, evolution, exploration, Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction, Star Trek, universe

I adored and admired Carl Sagan and read all his books with great enjoyment. I learned a lot, but one thing that Carl and I did not have in common was his conclusion that there was no better time to be alive as an astronomer than this moment.

I would say nay, nay to such a suggestion. This is precisely the wrong time and place to be alive.  Even before my love affair with astronomy and the great wide universe with all its mysteries came to my attention, I fairly thought there were more interesting times to live in.

I, as a young child, read a lot, and I always sought out stories about ancient Rome. I watched all the movies regarding that time, even the religious ones, because for some reason that time held a fascination for me.

Yet, the great unknown of space was always my favorite, and thus I became a seriously devoted Trekkie back in the 60’s. I never of course missed an episode of the original, and I’ve seen I suspect all of “Next Generation” as well as “Deep Space” and “Voyager.” We have even watched I think most of the “Enterprise” shows though that one finally petered out.

I was not a crazy person along the lines of the nerds on Big Bang Theory. I did not attend a convention, nor did I outfit a basement as a Enterprise “bridge” nor did I buy clothing and dress up as Uhura. (Believe me, I actually know folks who did! I know you are out there Data!!!) I was to all intents and purposes, a normal person.

Yet, I singularly day dreamed of living in a time when travel between the stars was common. I wanted to be aboard such a vessel and travel from place to place and meet all these wonderful sentient beings.

I cannot tell you why this was important. It was, and frankly it still is. I have such a desire to “know.” I am convinced that the universe must be teeming with life. Life, proven on this planet, suggests that it has a tenacity of will that is unprecedented. Life struggles and fights to survive. Any trip to the poles or the deepest ocean depths proves this beyond any suggestion to the contrary.

Life alters itself, adapts, evolves in whatever ways are necessary to live in a world that is alien, even to us humans. No oxygen? No light? No matter. Life on earth can find a way. If you don’t believe in evolution then travel to the deepest part of the ocean, some seven miles down or more, and find weird and exotic life forms, seen only by a handful of humans. No rational God would create life there for no reason except to be seen by a few. No, such life evolved naturally, to accommodate a bizarre and unique place.

Thus, as I see it, life in the universe also struggles and adapts as it needs to to find purchase upon rocks near suns throughout this unimaginably huge space-time continuum. And I assume that it takes forms that are outlandish and perhaps not even understandable to us humans. We might, at least at first, not even recognize it as life. 

To be aboard a ship roving the solar winds in search of explorable planets would be exciting indeed. To wiz from place to place in relatively short time periods. To beam from location to location obviating all that time spent in terminals. Ah, what joy.

A time when illness is rare, where life is long, where work is productive, where there is no poverty, where all have the ability to reach their potential? Yes, I know, this is not given, but surely, it is likely. To reach such astounding technical advancement and not have solved our societal issues, is not acceptable in my way of thinking.

For a number of years, my desire for this future was so strong that I read just tons of science fiction, reveling in the worlds and lives we would or might live in the future. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, and dozens of others plied me with the sweet nectar of “future” worlds.

Perhaps there is something to be said for readers of fiction, science or otherwise. Are we escape artists? Are we looking for something we find lacking in our time and place? Perhaps. Perhaps we are locked into a not recognized mind set that assumes all our daily worries and cares will evaporate in this brave and new world. Perhaps.

The sciency fi type of TV we are finding all over the place today, well, I can tell you that I enjoy a good deal of it. Although, there is so much, with Heroes, and Eureka, Fringe, and Sanctuary, Battlestar Galactica, and Stargate, Lost, and on and on, that maybe I’m getting a bit jaded. Maybe some of the wonder and mystery is fading.

I am not sure, but I still think Carl was wrong. A hundred years or so in the future, I think I’d like to be around then. But then, perhaps, God has plans I have no access to yet. Perhaps I have some space future after this one of which I am as yet unaware. Perhaps I still will sail on ships powered by dilithium crystals to exotic realms. I hope so;  I’m looking forward to meeting Tribbles and the staid Vulcans, and robots galore!