Such a nice little thing, this thing we've got. We have all those little cares and worries; we create all those funny little situations; we act out all those little dramas that confirm us as human. We're comfortable. We're happy. We have fun. We love each other. We've got friends and family and things to look forward to.
Life is good.
Forgive me, but I've been endowed with certain traits, certain proclivities of thought (neuroses, if you like). Gifts of those ancestors who, through the dark centuries, huddled in their bear skins and beaver pelts, waiting out the darkness in the cold, wet northern forests. The winters in those lands were longer and darker then --so long that each year, though spring came, the people were never free of doubt that it might not, nor forgot the darkness, even in the height of summer. So, perhaps it is this deep memory, passed down by fathers, that drives me.
I worry. At times, I am afraid.
Why? you ask.
Where to start? Or, better, which of the legion vexes me today?
This: Capitalist robber barons stalk each other, wielding their weapons of power and wealth. They thrust and feint. We watch the battle, played out in newspapers and on cable television, without ever truly understanding the stakes nor the rules of engagement. We only know that this nice little thing, this little life we've made, is at hazard.
You don't hold it against me, do you, that I am sometimes afraid? Of course you don't.
Sometimes you must give everything to God. You told me that. You told me that in the very moment I knew I would love you.
But still I would not rest. What about the wars? What about the suffering and the injustice?
Everything, you insisted. Everything.
