"Babble........................."

Nothing in my mind the last few days but babble, at least in the sense of not being able to grab hold of anything long enough to explore the nooks and crannies of it. The caricature I promised our favorite waiter at the Red Lobster is yet unfinished. The Rolheiser sequel that has entertained my love of literature the last couple of weeks has run dry about halfway through it. Services this past Sunday failed to stir me in any way and mostly life has been occupied with browsing through Einstein’s view of the universe, helping my granddaughter piece together a report due Monday. I mentioned Uno’s pizza to Beth Saturday and we drove about forty-five minutes north to a couple of flea markets not visited for years, stopping on the way back for the spinach-broccoli deep-dish we both love. Wandering a few of the outdoor stalls at the one location did bring me four books on WWII for ten bucks; but her back didn’t allow any real search of what was there. For the most part, these places remind me of what I used to see on inner-city street corners in Cincinnati, people hawking items out of automobile trunks, some of it, no doubt, stolen, but everything in the world, toiletries, clothing, jewelry, tools, somebody’s garage or warehouse all spilled out on rectangular tables and up for sale in much the same fashion as some of those Mediterranean ports known to me back in the early sixties. The vendor wanted thirty drachma; you offered him four and worked your way into an agreement. Life, in general, seems that way at the moment. Yesterday morning, having driven McKenna out to the church school, the old man picked up some McDonald coffee and two hash rounds before returning to attend her bi-weekly chapel service. They gather all the kids, kindergarten up to and including seniors, into the main sanctuary, sing a few songs before dismissing the little diddles, then turn it over to a speaker who addresses them with a short sermon before opening it up to prayer. It was an enjoyable hour for me who, so many years ago, double-shifted between its genesis and my job at the railroad, picking up students in an old broken-down van in the beginning and eventually teaching the upper learning center, tenth through twelve grade, the entire class able to fit into the left side of the balcony. Did we achieve anything in so far as our hope to provide a more sanctified, stable atmosphere for learning? Most certainly, here we are yet able to “sow seed”, our teachers all believers, the educational material not purged of that which originally birthed this country. The world is still the world, though; life is still life; and generation after generation makes its own way through this mess that humanity makes of it all. Even sitting in the third pew back, sermon or no sermon, Bible-filled or I-phone saturated, it takes an encounter. My heart cries to see one in our youth……..