" BE SERIOUS ! "

        "Writer's Block" !  Isn't that the term to use when 'the juices' are not flowing ?  Or, maybe they are 'flowing' but the direction of the flow seems 'off course' or the content carries slight substance and significance in the face of all the 'heaviness' that prevails.

    Occasionally, these 'mutterings' have tilted toward (for me) serious topics.  Usually, however, 'musings' and 'meanderings' have been the typical entries with heavy doses of retrospectives.  Recently, levity and such have sounded discordant.

     First, there is Lent ... a time of preparation for Easter, calling for rigorous self-examination . . .for those who consider themselves seriously within the Christian tradition.  While I hear less of the "What are you giving up for Lent?" motif than formerly, the Forty Days carry a solemnity that can permeate many routines.

    Then, there is the rancorous tumult  within American politics and much of society.  As an academically trained historian, I am aware that there is a long-standing, somewhat subterranean strain that periodically erupts in what the late Professor Richard Hofstadter called The Paranoid Style in American Politics.  However, after several years of steady decline, basic civility and concepts such as compromise for the common good have been seldom practiced in recent months. It is sad !

   "Bad Things" happen . . . and often with a randomness that defies understanding. Within the past couple of weeks, I learned of the death of a high school classmate in a bizarre kind of automobile accident.  "It shouldn't have happened"; but he is dead.  Yesterday, my wife learned that her 30 year old niece has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.  Events like these can leave us wondering . . . "Why?" . . . and glib  'answers' do not satisfy.

    Dad frequently  admonished that "there is a time and place for all things".  I had thought that he coined that phrase until I read Ecclesiastes.  Being serious in the face of tragedy and sadness is 'timely' and appropriate.  Yet, Mark Erelli's lyrics from Passing Through resonate: "Sometimes injustice and indifference are the only things I see but I refuse to let my hope become the latest casualty."  There is much that goes beyond my own understanding.  Here at the beginning of Christian Holy Week, I look for clues in the progression from Palm Sunday through Good Friday to the MYSTERY   of Easter and resurrection and new life.

    I have never been inclined towards what is sometime called 'proof-texting' as a kind of facile way of 'proving' one's point by citing a Biblical reference.   But there are generations of affirmations for the Psalmist's assertion that        " weeping may last through the night, but joy  comes in the morning". (Psalm 30:5)  

    There are times not to be serious; and times to be serious.

          Satchel