The settling time has come. The activities of the day acquiesce to the calm of the night. The firing of the coal hopper for our steam locomotives has died down. The trains are in the train yard. Night winds blow over our heated lives. We humans require rest and recuperation. We cannot go 24/7. It is said that old folks have four or five good hours in them. A true statement, I think. We stand on a tightrope, and our balance is precarious. We must learn how to hold the balance pole to find our center of gravity. When you lose your long pole, you fall off the rope…hopefully, there is a net.

The Hollywood picture of effective living is a myth. In the MGM masterpiece, we see John Wayne fight off many bad guys without getting a scratch in his make-up. Mad Men advertising executives drink in their office starting in the mornings and continue all day and well into the night with a smile and a wink. June Cleaver fixes breakfast in pearls. Rob and Laura Petri kiss each other good night and retire to their own twin bed on either side of their bedroom. If you are not working eighteen hours a day, you are not trying. People brag about sleeping 3 or 4 hours a night. They seem to have boundless energy.

Somewhere along the way, we began to believe the myth that a human being elected to be President is endowed with superhuman powers. We decided to not trust our mere mortal eyes and lay our hopes in our conspiracy theories. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. This applies to both political parties. This bit of common sense also applies to religious leaders. We want our religious leaders to leap off the pages of the Bible and be the embodiment of excellent storytelling. The preacher who tells us God told him/her to become rich to illustrate the benefits of serving God with the tithes and offerings of poor people is working on The Ark…but it is for them and not us.

Night Winds bring rest. A time to recharge and reflect on what has been and our role in it. A senator recently commented on the diminishment of Medicaid that we were all going to die someday missed the point. Our primary goal should be to take care of each other.

We attribute the greatness of our nation to the wrong pillars of conduct. Having all come here from somewhere else, we shut the doors to all who do not fit our storybook ideal. This would be likened to the Native Americans meeting us at the shore and telling us to turn around and return home to England. I observed when I was a member of Southern Illinois University that some saw the University’s needs in light of their parochial needs. Others saw the big picture of inclusion as the answer for a strong University. Some wanted work-life to be an image of their lives in a rural environment. Everyone should look like them and attend the same few recognized churches. Others who had been raised in the same towns and villages wanted to accept everyone and make no distinction as to differences of faith or ethnicity. Indeed, many of the most open people to helping others different from themselves were from biased hamlets.

Each of us is our biggest mystery. We seek to fix those around us when we have no clue about what makes us tick. Words can be a healing balm or a burning fire. Such power comes from the movement of the tongue. At night, we consider how we can better utilize that power to help, not to hurt…