A NEW SORCERY ACROSS THE LAND

We know everything about nothing, and nothing about everything.

Another way of saying we're over-informed about every trivial the media can hard-wire into our brain circuitry; and yet when it comes to the big stuff, seem to have neither the time nor the inclination. Big stuff as in: The planet ...the universe...the cosmic forces at work holding it together...the prospects of a grand design and designer.

Consider the evidence.

Usually we can tell you more about the weather than the climate. More about the score than the game. More about the schools than schooling. More about politicians than politics, passion than love, love than marriage, and sex than the children it produces. What's wrong with us!

Maybe it's as simple as the fact we prefer simplicity to complexity. So we go for the quick headline, the easy explanation, the fast sound-bite. Fortunately for us, most of the people we meet are comparably superficial. And thus the classic dinner conversations among polite society about, well about nothing.

Which brings to mind Scrooge's three spirits. What if we were visited by our own three spirits? Say, that terrific old uncle who was in the War and came back with a barracks-full of bare-knuckled advice for kids like you. Or that special teacher whose literature class introduced you for the first time to the textured worlds of Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Arthur Miller and Thornton Wilder. Or that hospital chaplain who held your sweating hands that long night before surgery.

What would these spirits have to say to you now? Now while you passively stare into your screens, little and large, passively permitting these messages and messengers into your life? I'll tell you what they told me.

I remember your mind. Do you? It's right behind those stupid, staring eyes....!