May is fast
approaching and this spring is different.
The cold and wet months of February and March have changed the desert
that has been almost the same for my eight years in Landers. The old timers say they cannot remember such
a spring for we now have an abundance of green weeds with their many-colored
flowers. April has also brought us an
invasion of caterpillars and now there are butterflies everywhere with no apparent
rhythm or reason. Why?
One of the obvious
answer is change, change is inherent to the world we populate. Everything seems to have a cycle or process
whether or not it is apparent to the naked uninformed eye. My Biology professor was informed as to the
processes of nature and the life cycles of bugs and plants but I was not into
the workings of such things to any great extent. The timing of nature was his thing while I have
long forgotten such things except the fact that change is the friend of our
physical world order.
We humans
are uncomfortable with change but just wait, change comes upon us like the
weather. The philosophers tell us that
there are two eternities, one being the physical cosmic eternity that most of
us think of as temporary but is it really?
The form and function of the galaxies change, sometimes dramatically,
but we can be certain that they will reform and again start the process anew. Life on our planet may be someday be wiped out
but there will be another beginning however small.
The second
eternity is the spiritual realm or dimension.
This is the classical eternity that all we living human beings hang our hat
on. The accepted understanding is that
this eternity is static, a paradise that will compensate we humans for the vicissitudes
of life and where we can relax without the fear of change. One might ask, is
this a good understanding? Where science
has informed our physical eternity, could our spiritual eternity also be a
dimension of change? We all should hope
that this may be the case for most of humanity, at best, has only scratched the
surface of our spiritual potential.
The paths of
the two eternities have at times crossed.
When this has happened, a spiritual spark is ignited in our world. All the religions of our eternity began with
a spark igniting one individual to set aside the humdrum of life for an
adventure into the spiritual realm. We
only hear about the influential names like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus
and Mohammed. There have been thousands of
others, less influential individuals who, when ignited, made the decision to
explore their spiritual eternity.
The history
of the Jewish people experienced such an intersection of eternities 4000 years
ago. A change was about to happen and is
recorded in the book of Exodus, chapter 2, 23 to 25. (KJV)
“And it came
to pass in process of time, that the King of Egypt died: and the children of
Israel sighed by reason of the bondage.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with
Abraham, Isaac and with Jacob. And God
looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.”
Let the
fireworks begin!
G. Goslaw
Landers, CA
