Though the universe is 13.7 billion years old (counting from the Big Bang), the Solar system and Earth are a mere 4.4 billion years old.  (These things take time.)  Thanks to Darwin we know what happened after the first living cell evolved (nobody knows how that happened) but Darwin’s theory would have been thrown on the trash heap except for the work of the Father of Genetics, Abbot Gregor Mendel, an unassuming Augustinian monk. (Same order as Luther.)     

You see, Darwin’s theory, with its survival of the fittest, didn’t account for the variety of mammal offspring, and Gregor Mendel showed how the genes provide for that through his work on the genetics of peas.  It saved Darwin’s theory.

They were all men probing the dark, and but for a little help from the Holy Spitit, they would all have worked in vain.  Stay on the good side of the Lord!

As you probably know already, the Arctic has been heating up, mainly because of human activity.  This threatens the extinction of the polar bear, the reindeer, and the musk ox, all beautiful animals.  The North Pole has recently been underwater, something that never happened before.  While all this is alarming, it means threatening changes to human habitats.

Hurricanes will become more frequent and destructive, as will floods and the inundation of coastal cities.  Summers in certain areas will be too hot for air-conditioning to handle, and winters will mean endless wet. 

I know I don’t want to leave that kind of world to my child and grandchild, so please, encourage those who can do something about it, without destroying the social and cultural order.

Loretta and I got into a fight.  I yelled at her and she yelled at me.  I could feel her anger.

            “That’s a sin,” I blurted out at her.

            “What do you know about sin?” came her reply.

            What?  She had actually given me a compliment!

            Later we laughed about it, together.  Sometimes it takes our human mistakes to bring us together.

As it’s finally dawned on us with the Covid-19 around, we’re in this together.  Either we help each other make it through this world, or we perish, alone, to wander out into the universe where the temperature is absolute zero, -273.15 degrees Fahrenheit.

I never taught everything a good teacher should teach—you just can’t.  But I hope, either subconsciously or accidentally, I left some lessons about life, lessons you only learn if you care about others.  Not everyone learns from Scripture.

I may be a lifelong Republican, but I would certainly change Donald Trump’s immigrant policies.  There would no longer be this nonsense of separating the children from their parents at the border, and those immigrants fleeing the chaos in El Salvador and Guatemala would be safely incorporated in various States with the possibility of becoming citizens.  As for the illegals, citizenship would be a goal in five years, for which they’d have to learn English and their citizenship.  No more living by hiding.  This must be out in the open.

The latest PEW report shows the U.S. Christians are way ahead of their European counterparts in practice and ideals, and I say, “Let’s show it.”  We are not going to give the cold shoulder to the needy and the stranger—we will vanquish those who oppose us, albeit with justice and love.  That’s the Christian modus operandi.

Mao Zedung’s soldiers vanquished the Tibetans in their own way—pillage, destruction, rape and murder.  That’s not our way.  We’ve tried to change people for two thousand years, and this time, let’s get it right.

First they told my ancestors the world was the center of the solar system.  Then Galileo got into trouble for saying the sun was.  Recently they said what was keeping the galaxies together was the dark matter.  Now, some innovators insist there is no dark matter, it’s a new action of gravity.  I solve all this by attributing to the Creator a thousand ways to keep us humans busy, and in the end I subscribe to the words of St. John, “God is Love.”  It goes along with the Christian message.

It’s helped me get through hundreds of predicaments, and that’s what life’s about. We’ll be here for many a year trying to figure out our physics, but a ten-year-old can knock me cold with that one quote from St. John.  Life is not meant to be complicated; wisdom is accessible to a child.  May I also persevere.

The New Testament gave rise to St. John’s dictum, and like Einstein, he liked to simplify.  What am I, that I can’t understand a simple message?