TRUSTING THOSE OVER 30

Time is a peculiar thing. To Einstein it's relative. To Christians it's followed with eternity. To lovers they can't get enough of it. To elders they'd like to get more of it. To children, well to children, time is rather meaningless, because for them it just is.

Museums, on the other hand, all take the same point of view. They exist to capture it, display it, extol it. Right now the Metropolitan Museum of New York is giving time a special look they call: "Rooms With a View - the Open Windows in the 19th Century." Thirty one paintings each depicting a view from inside a different room.

Hard for anyone from one point in time to fully understand anyone or anything from a different point in time. We can only look through a glass darkly and speculate. Inevitably our speculation will be refracted by our own personal perceptions. Much like the light from the sun is refracted by the different angles from which we're looking at it. So it is that the ways of the past -- heroes and heroines, medicines and plumbing -- are usually perceived as frozen in a long ago time-frame useful only for a passing smile of interest,

That seems so useless. Like attending an old school reunion and bringing back only your name tag. There has to be something more valuable on this continuum we call the trajectory of our lives. Of our generations, Of our nation. For some, what-has-been is fossilized; simply sentimental memories. For others, what-has-been are the great shoulders upon which we have stood in order to see still greater tomorrows.

But here's the problem. In youth's pride and vigor, there doesn't always seem much to learn from a graying cranky generation. Instead, today's young may see the same failures and hypocrisies they did in the 60s with their shibboleth: "Don't trust anyone over 30!"

What then can the young 50 years later pick out from the shambles of history? Carefully excavated, the ruins can still yield up treasures. The primitives, their sense of tribe...the ancients, their sense of awe...the prophets, their sense of God ...the Renaissance, their sense of man...the Enlightenment, their sense of reason....the Victorians, their sense of propriety...the Greatest Generation, their sense of endurance....our families, their sense that blood truly is thicker than water.

Did any of those past generations really follow their dreams, live their ideals? Hardly! And yet here's something for any heart under 30 to ponder. How many of those uncompleted dreams and ideals still shine in the darkness of our own times? If they do -- and so many do -- then what may be most needed today is not so much new dreams and ideals; wiser still, mounting new and better missions to fulfill the same old dreams and ideals...