"Interaction....................."

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next”…. Gilda Radner

“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown into instant flame by an encounter with another human being”…… Albert Schweitzer

The picture here was posted on Facebook by my cousin who recently lost her granddaughter and it took my thoughts to these couple of quotes. Mae West, the blond bombshell whose Vaudeville raw humor made her a celebrity, once said that “You only live once; but, if you do it right, once is enough.” John Wayne, from his cowboy perspective, simply noted that “Life’s hard; and it’s even harder if you’re stupid.” People – we’re certainly a work in progress, from beginning to end, aren’t we? A mixed bag of genetics, history, and cultural environment all tossed into overlapping time frames forcing us to “face the music and dance”. Sometimes it seems to me that the biggest thorn in the whole rosebush is we, ourselves, the rest of it no picnic, but survivable, even treasurable, at times, in some ways, the journey a matter of how much inner peace goes with us in the next step. We need God. We need each other. Anne Frank wrote “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world” and, for me, expresses the Bible in a single sentence. All that’s missing is “Christ in me”. Indeed, those three words are the fire in the furnace, the water in the well, that which gives purpose, direction, and meaning to the vessel, feeding not just the individual, but providing connection with others in the overflow. I have never bought into the theology that “born-again” was some sudden transformation where suddenly the believer now is invested with authority and gifts all his to manipulate via his own spiritual wisdom. We can be “used”, however. We can be “reflectors”, “transmitters”, an extension of all that He is, there for each other in the darkness, a candle in the night. This…. is the Gospel.