Reply #150: You sound like my other side!

[EST]

It is so very easy to get caught up in the evil that surrounds us, today, particularly given the moderator's question last night concerning whether or not we can ever enjoy the "security" we used to live under! It's amusing, in a macabre sort of way, to remember a seminar I attended in St. Louis in 1980 where we concluded our biggest single goal at that time was to expose the game the US and the USSR were playing with the lives of our citizens. The constant threat of nuclear annihilation in those days led to an appalling level of suicide, especially among teens and young adults. Maybe I was more connected to day-to-day survival in those days, but these times seem to me to be even more ugly.

Yes, heaven must not be a place of instant wish-fulfillment and peace; it must be, for happiness' sake, a place of challenges and victories, with the constant threat of losing one's identity and being mortal. This certainly has the size enough to be heaven, as well as all the other requirements.

I am not so sanguine as to assume that even twenty years will be enough to re-direct the damage from the Bush empire. I have no doubt the upcoming challenges will leave many rightly misty eyed thinking about how calm and secure we had it back in "the good 'ol days" of the early twenty first century. Probably my biggest regret comes from the realization that I likely will not be among them. I do find myself, from time to time, getting very angry that the forces of evil refuse to allow me the occasion for a little reflective rumination and quiet enjoyment of the present.

The election of Kerry certainly will be no panacea, as you point out; merely a shaky beginning. Mayberry only exists in childhood's memories. Pity that Nader didn't threaten to garner a much higher percentage of the vote in order to force the inclusion of some of his points into the plans of the progressive party. It truly does start here, now.