The Fog of Our Times

In the early morning fog today, I felt as if I were traveling in some sort of tunnel. The coffee was hot but it just seems to be so very lonely while it was still dark and I was (literally) flying up the interstate in that surreal tunnel.

So weird.

I was listening to NPR, as usual, and just as I got on the interstate (or the tunnel as I am going to think of it today) I heard a story on Morning Edition about the guy from Turkey that tried to kill the pope way back when. He got out of prison yesterday. He served 20 years in an Italian prison for that act and then was deported back to Turkey to finish serving a life sentence for killing a Journalist several years before - yep, he had escaped from prison for that one already.

Well, the story was that he only served six years of the rest of his life in Turkey and was released. And nope, that's not the craziest part - that is reserved for all the people lining the streets throwing bouquets of flowers in his path as he left prison.

A hero.

What kind of world makes a hero out of someone that kills and tries to kill again? I know, I know, there are no answers to that question, at least not any that we could understand. It's just the way it is - but it did get me thinking. And I do love that! It made me realize that there will - for forever and a day - be lots of things that I don't understand. I don't think we, as Americans, will ever be able to understand the actions of radicals fighting something we can't understand why they are fighting it.

It's kind of like boys trying to figure out girls!

So as we try to bend the Iraqi people to our way of life and continue to be met with distrust and violence, I have promised myself not to be amazed any longer. Not to be amazed at things I don't understand. Not to be disgusted by the actions of a people there is no way I can understand.

I think Jesus was right. I think he was real right in so many things. There are sometimes that you have to just walk away to the edge of the village and knock the dust of off your sandles and pass on and keep trying somehwere else.

Words to live by? Those that have ears, let them hear..........

Which brings me back to the beginning and the fog. Does the rest of the world live in a fog or do we? Who is right when the views are so very different and who gets to say? Is it the ones with the biggest guns? I don't know - I really don't but I know what I have been called to do and I try so hard to do it each and every day.

I think I will leave the rest of it for the people paid to worry today. I'm going to do what I know I am supposed to do. I am going to pray.

So today I pray for patience. I pray for wisdom for our leaders (Lord knows they need it). I pray that Eddie's second 35 years will be more exciting for him than his first 35. But mostly I pray that the love I have within me will be channeled, in historic preportions, to the woman I love. For she is the light of my world.

God Bless.