Resounding

Dear Eugene,

I was sorting my garbage this morning and my neighbor walked by with her dog and said Hi.

We'd usually greet each others over a longer distance just to avoid a barking contest between our dogs.  As it happened that I was sans dog today she was able to squeeze in more than a How are you.

"How does your son enjoy high-school?"

I said He loves it, dressing himself up everyday.  Like an addiction I didn't say.

She replied as she had before, not to my response but to complete her point, "It's very different; isn't it?"

She meant high-school.  (Or teenage?  Or the world according to my son?  Or my perception of my son's perception of himself or the world?)

Yesterday in California a man killed his estranged wife inside an elementary school classroom, right in front of a group of special needs children.  Then right there he killed himself too.  Two students were injured, and one later died.  The police said the man walked into the classroom with a large revolver and "without saying anything" aimed at what he has come to aim for.

And then the world became a very different place, didn't it?

I now use my headset as a pair of earmuffs when I vacuum, for my 20-year-old friend is wailing more sorrowfully by the day.  Yesterday as I moved it along the carpet I found its muffled noise strangely soothing, like an elegiac chant, a dirge that proclaims life when there is dying all around.

One time I heard a conversation between two Jewish scholars.  One proposed Not that we don't want to believe Jesus is the Messiah, but according to the scripture we all know there will be peace and the world will be a whole new place when the Messiah is here...  And the other completed his thought But your Jesus came--Then with a gentle smirk on their face they finished the sentence in unison--yet nothing changes!

What difference, if any, does Jesus make?  It is a great question.  Anyone who is serious about Jesus must ask and seek to answer.

This Easter I pray to take off my earmuffs and hear the discharge of revolver resounding in this groaning world.

Yours, Alex

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