Thunder clapped in the early hours of the morning. It woke Mylo and me up. The sound of a summer storm. Today it is cooler. Not cool but cooler. Nice for meteorological summer. It is not the heat, it is the humidity. Some fellows from Texas, a couple of years back, wondered how I stood the humidity. They were not accustomed to such high humidity in Texas. We visited El Paso many times when Uncle Merle and Aunt Lauretta were alive. It was hot and hotter than anything in our neck of the woods. They had a Cooler on the roof of their home. It put moisture in the air. They shut it off at dark, and it was a miserable night. I asked Aunt Lauretta if I could borrow her fan for our bedroom, as I could not sleep. MJ welcomed the breeze, although she did not want me to ask for it.

We stand on the precipice, looking out at the valley of Change. None of us likes it, and all of us need it. We can not grow if we do not change. Change arrives in house slippers or combat boots. At times we have a while to acclimate ourselves to the new digs, while at others we are thrown into the malestrom. Our weather is changing in real time. To deny it is to throw rocks at the Sun. The Earth is not flat, we really landed on the Moon, and Climate Change is real.

I watched a fascinating movie the other night where a psychiatrist is counseling a little boy. He is obsessed with drawing pictures of future events that transpire. The psychiatrist is professional in her understanding that the boy is troubled until the pictures he drew about her came to pass. The boy’s former psychatrist before her had attempted to set himself on fire and had succeded resuting in burns across much of his body. He was under supervised care and cautioned the female psychiatrist that she would either have to kill the boy or the boy would kill her. The boy tells her that he is god and that what he draws comes to pass. He goes on to explain that he puts the words she says and the thoughts she has in her mouth and head. The female psychiatrist is speaking with another psychiatrist, who is analyzing what she is saying as she tells him that they live in the boy’s mind and have no existence outside of it.

We live in the mind of God, do we not? Are our steps preordained, or are we free moral agents? Are we the products of nature or nurture? Is Schrodinger’s cat in the box if we do not open the box to see it? If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, did it really fall?

Political life in the United States has changed dramatically. Change is happening all around us. Does a red hat make us better, or must it say, ‘Make America Great Again?’

The path we are on is enjoyable and arduous. Some of us are happy with the results of the New Normal, while others are troubled. Christ’s heart was for the poor among us. His message was for the marginalized and those who have no voice and who are unseen. There is a through line in the midst of change.

‘We have little since your Dad left, but we will survive,’ Neva J said. ‘I am going to take classes in photography at the Lincoln School on State Street,’ Neva J continued. ‘It will be powdered milk and split pea soup for now, but better days are ahead,’ Neva J danced an Irish Jig.