What a World

One of the best parts of visiting my Dad is the drive both to and from the airport. It's one of the rare times I get him all to my self. In spite of the fact that he isn't usually much of a talker there is rarely silence on our drives. We discuss politics, our family and one of my favorites, my dads stories of growing up in New Mexico. This weeks trip was no different. As we drove past a horse farm and I made the observation that on of the horses was on its side and wondered out loud if it was dead, dad assured me that for some reason in Texas this was common. He wasn't sure if it was the breed of the horse or what, but it was a common sighting even in winter. This of course brought up the conversation of the horses he had as a child on the farm. He mentioned that some of their horses were used as a team to pull a wagon. I listened but wondered in my head if my dad as a child ever imaged that he would be driving his own son to the airport to fly several hundred miles back home? As a child did he know that his world was about to make a major change? His world has probably made the most changes of any generation in recent memory. Once the industrial revolution hit, there was no stopping the change. His family farm would soon be sold so that they could move into town. His parents would open a restaurant, eventually close that and move to California. He lived through the great depression and served in the Korean War.

That's a lot of change especially when I compare my world to his and yet I see history repeating. We are currently in a depression yet noting like the one that grabbed and shook my fathers generation. Our revolution was technological. I have read about people protesting the power poles being strung across the nation the way people have protested nuclear energy. Amazing is all of this is the vast majority of people have not lost their faith. Most believe in God. And yes we struggle with it diagnose it, subject it to science and yet come out of all of that believing in God. I watched a show on the cosmos and listened as one of the most brilliant minds of our time, Stephen Hawking, proclaim that because there was no time prior to the big bang, there could be no God. My first thought wasn't wow, I guess that there is no God, it was that Stephen Hawking does not understand the nature of God. The other amazing thing is that I doubt if Mr. Hawking's findings  would change anyone's mind who believes in God. For those who have been  touched and changed that is the one thing we most likely won't give up.

I am not speaking of religion, but in our own personal spirituality. As a gay man, I have pushed back against much of organized religion in my life. They had rejected me so I would reject them. In spite of that in just about every place in the world I have visited my first stops were to Cathedrals and Temples. I can tell you I have a great love of architecture, but this was always something more. I find peace in the house of God. I commune with the Divine in the house of God. I find it shocking that so many people visit a church and manage to find hate. To reject their fellow humans. Yet this behavior has been going on for centuries. The belief that one religion is superior to another. That one country is superior to another. That piece of the earth is holier than another.  While I was in Texas, my Dad's Presybeterian minister spoke about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. He used the metaphysical explanation that it was not a miracle where Jesus actually turned the meal for five into a meal for five thousand, it was a story about sharing. Because of a willingness to give what little he and the disciples had, it started a ground swell of sharing among the crowd. I was brought to tears thinking what a world: A christian and be a metaphysician! To take it farther we do live in an amazing world at an amazing time. A world where people who have done bad things can also do amazing good. A world where there is so much going on, that it should be a crime for anyone to become bored. A beautiful world, where people care about each other and the environment. A world where I can walk into a machine and fly several hundred miles and get to spend four hours in another machine driving down paved roads listening to stories told by the man responsible for my existence! What a World indeed!