What
weather conditions (hot and humid, cold and windy, storm brewing)
might depict the week you just had? What weather forecast might fit
the week ahead? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition,
page 1259).
When
I was a young man in federal prison during the late 1960s, I
subscribed to the Christian Science Monitor. The paper came in the
mail every weekday and was at the time printed on a somewhat smaller
size paper than the usual daily paper. Without a plethora of ads, it
was also greatly reduced in thickness. I distinctly remember sitting
on my bunk one day, looking at the paper spread out before me, and
seeing amidst the newsprint a striking drawing in black ink of a
small boat completely surrounded by terrible storm tossed seas. A
young man stood in the bow of the boat leaning forward and facing
directly into the dark swirling clouds that confronted him. I deeply
wanted to be this young man who remained focused, steady, and unfazed
amidst surrounding chaos.
That
was years ago and I now have ample evidence that I am not nor ever
have been a person impervious to tumultuous surroundings. I am
deeply influence by what goes on around me and the emotional and
intellectual climate that fluctuates from day-to-day, week-to-week,
month-to-month, year-to-year. I have done stupid things, things that
I regret. I have gotten swept up in the moment and joined in gang
bangs of one type or another when rightly I should have been absent.
I have signed on to actions that in retrospect were based on
arrogance and a lust not to be abandoned by trundling bandwagons of
cool. The inescapable conclusion—I am not above the fray; far from
it, blood covers my hands.
This
is why human experience is unavoidably an admixture of pain,
suffering, and regret. In addition to elements of goodness and light,
we are not perfect and our sophomoric desire and demeanor calculated
to be otherwise does not make it so.
Print Page
