The clock started ticking 14.3 billion years ago.  What happened since then is history: “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.”  We don’t disturb the eternal calm.  But what you do with this moment may affect your future forever.

In a world where humans make millions of mistakes, intention matters so as to set the record straight.  The eternal author of the Big Bang is not disturbed by your misappropriations, but reads your heart.  Was that a selfish blunder or an example of pure selflessness?

Little moments add up to one big moment (if we’ve done it right) at the end, where you either mount the steps or descend.  I don’t want to have misjudged after having been given eighty-seven long years to get it right.

Things happen in our world by chance.  (At least that’s the way we look at it.)  The thing to do is be ready for it.  There is a citizen in this community whom I enjoy meeting, but I only meet her by chance.  I had something important to tell her, but I don’t call up other women.

My wife is my joy; but I did meet the other woman and I was ready.  I delivered my message with success, and the outcome was good.  Things work out when we  have God’s interests at heart.  At least that’s what I had in mind, and He doesn’t play games with us.

The whole thing was a coincidental happening that left me dizzy, it was so quick and efficient.  I have said before I think God plays with chance the way the atomic scientists did at Los Alamos.  (Translate that name as The Poplars, the first tree to have its DNA computed.)

This afternoon, during an idle moment, I started a prayer: “Thanks, Lord, for coming into my life….”  Stop!  Who’s coming into whose life?  Am not I the intruder, coming into the life of an ageless being, who arranged things so that I could begin to exist?  Am I comporting myself like the guest that I am, or do I think I’m the owner of this neck of the woods?

I exist among others in the same situation, so let me be hospitable, humble, friendly, kind (the Scout Law) and obedient to the laws not only of my vicinity, but of my professed religion.  A son learns to be independent by first being obedient.

I am not the only thinker who imagines sometimes he is the solely responsible person in his world (Marx, Sartre, Nietzsche, Foucault), but I’d better get it straight that I’m only a visitor.

When I was in first grade, my eye was immediately caught by a tall girl with blonde pig tails.  She had the same last name as I, though she was of no relation.  I was intrigued by her beauty, and was just itching to get her attention.  But whether she did it purposely or not, she never looked my way.

Nowadays I still believe in the innocence of first graders, but standing outside the school door one day at dismissal, she was talking with some of her friends.   She was on a raised, three step concrete podium that led to the main stairs that led down to the highway.  Tired of being ignored, I went and pushed her down those three steps – yes, pushed her down the stairs.  And she was my first love!

When the discussion comes up of original sin, I know of the malevolent instincts we all hide.  I am grateful for a place called confession where I can go and tell God I’ll try to be more honorable the next time.

One winter, when we were back at the old house, we came down to the basement one morning and the floor looked so shiny – it was covered with a one-inch deep layer of water.  It was too shallow to empty with buckets, but leave it to native ingenuity, we soon swept it up in dust pans; from there into buckets and down the drain.

The cause was two cracks in the foundation, which I alleviated by digging a hole outside the foundation with the help of the boys (did they love the idea of digging to China!) and then smearing the crack with tar.  We did this for both cracks, and then filled in the holes.  Of course the digging was done the following summer.

Sometimes we are faced by seemingly insurmountable problems, but as we pray in the Credo, we believe in divine communication, “the communion of saints,” and my little tykes had no idea where I got my resourceful solutioms.