Barnes and Noble was a bit quiet this morning.  I was there to pick up a birthday card. I purchased tear-off-the-day and desk calendars for many years, my habit beginning in the early 90s for my office at Southern Illinois University. In those days it was my sheer delight to find an after-Christmas New Yorker Calendar on sale.  Well, there was one left and it was 25% off and I had it in my hand and then subsequently put it back. I remembered that I am subscribed to the New Yorker Magazine both online and in hard copy and all of the current cartoons are in those mediums. Also, MJ and Jonathon both have tear-the-day-off calendars and they share with me each day.

So…we search for peace and don’t let anyone tell you that we do not. we seek the sparkle that captivates our imagination. Sometimes the sparkle is hard to find. Leaders tell us with their shiny rhetoric that they have discovered the elusive peace. We are looking…so we try out their poltis and panacea in a bottle for just $19.99. 

Peace is neither found in a bottle nor a pill. Peace comes from purpose. A vision for the future and knowledge of the past. We change as I have changed in my determination to purchase calendars that reminded me of my 32+ year career at SIUC. The pages are turning and the chapters are changing. But the constants are bedrock. Faith in the inherent goodness of others. Hope for a future that we will, ‘Beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks,’ and calmness amid the storm.

The actress Jodi Foster was being interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning and she commented that she was much calmer than she had been in her youth and that perhaps it was a chemical thing. I have found this to be true with me. Somehow the chains of chasing a dollar and impressing others and the pursuit of success at the expense of health both mentally and physically are not so important as the truth of our situation becomes apparent. This life is a preview with a purpose and our time on Stage is but a moment…