Pisces or Aquarius?
Ages of Ages
Thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Isaiah 57:15
Our time passes from year to year, for me, through ages of trains, cars, wars, planes, electronics. I wouldn’t want to have missed the electronics age, especially the age of weather satellites and the incredible internet, but if I had lived before satellites and WWW I wouldn’t have known to miss them. There is something incredible out there in another age, but I’m content here. A friend recently introduced me to the marvel of a virtual tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on the Mall in Washington, DC. http://www.mnh.si.edu/vtp/1-desktop/. Living in Washington two Navy tours of duty and afterward the first year of Navy retirement, I have been to the NMNH several times for real, and find that walking into the virtual rotunda feels eerily as real as real, it’s that perfect, how do they do that? The link is on my desktop so I can go on the spur of the moment, which I do now and then for escape if nothing else. Reading this morning about the second suicide bombing in Volgograd made me decide to go back to the Smithsonian for a few minutes, where life is peaceful, and was peaceful.
Of Volgograd -- and also of Newtown quite frankly the product of no age of contrite and humble spirit -- looking back, present, and ahead, if I were choosing to do it all over I might elect to give the new terrorism age a miss and live in the 19th century next door to my greatgrandfather who died in 1903. What we see today in Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, seems inexorably charted to envelop here all too soon, and I appreciate being old enough for confidence that I may miss living far into an age of hatred and fear. From Pisces into the Age of Aquarius. If we can’t stop it, should we at least look back to see how it could have been prevented? An interesting PhD dissertation, maybe it would save some future age from self-obliteration. How far back should we look? Crusades? Garden of Eden? Holocaust? Age of the Councils? Hiroshima? We would have to consider those things left undone which we ought to have done as well as those things done which we ought not to have done.
Of ages, here we are looking at New Years Eve and New Years Day, leaving and entering ages of Time. Abiding out there inhabiting eternity beyond time contemplating this experiment, what does the high and lofty One think of us?
Of electronic wonders another besides NMNH is watching traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which I have driven across http://www.earthcam.com/world/australia/sydney/ and reading the Sydney Morning Herald, and this morning being on the bridge of the Aurora Australis as the ship breaks through Antarctic ice http://media.smh.com.au/news/national-news/aurora-australis-smashes-sea-ice-5042266.html I’ve been following that rescue operation almost minute to minute,
my father would never have believed it, let alone grandfathers or George Washington. When Pop was a boy it could have been months before anyone knew about the expedition’s predicament. In George Washington’s time, years. In Jesus' day when all the world was taxed, Antarctica didn't exist, else Caesar Augustus would have done.
Come to think of it, WWW and the Weather Channel I might give it a miss, but not to live and die before the age of that 1948 Buick,
probably my all time favorite.
Or to have missed aging with those I love, including Joe, who just drove away from Christmas
on his way to 2014.
TW+