I love being 92!  I’ve written about the vista and the panoply and all that is true.  But there  is also  the insight that comes with age.  At least I’m calling it insight.  I look back and take heed of what my children have to say about their growing up.  It is quite obvious that I have muddled through.  I was smart and educated and competent in some areas.  i really tried to be a good mother but in some areas it seems I blew it!  One of my big mistakes was to think I was smart and educated and competent.  But I never asked for help until things were beyond repairing.  Advice might have been very helpful early on.  But who needed it?  Not me.

Now my kids are sixty-ish and it becomes obvious that they, too, have muddled through.  Even though they are smart and educated and competent in many areas, they still muddle through.  Maybe that’s what we ALL do – muddle through.  I rejoice at how well they are doing and the people they’ve become. Is that what it’s all about? = the transfiguration – striving, seeking, becoming.   And learning.  Learning until we can’t learn anymore.

I think of Mother Angelica who is my age and has been bedridden for years.  What a life she had!  How could a contemplative nun start a TV network?   She worked and prayed and taught and now she lies in bed.  But I am thinking that she is still learning.  I pray for her often and imagine that she is praying for me and for all of us.

I once read about someone who wanted to live life to the full so that when it was all over she could say, “Woo-hoo, what a ride!”  Maybe that’s what I’m doing, woo-hooing!  It HAS been a ride.  A small ride because I’m only a little person in the scheme of things, one out of billions, There are so many life stories out there in the world and we know so little of them.  Fifty years ago I was all wrapped up in my little life with my little family and my little problems.  We focus on what we need to do to make it to the next day.

It was a busy life.   Seven children, one after another.  Working, feeding, clothing, taking care of the house.  Prayer group.  When Father Joe thought he’d take the prayer group to the Holy Land I wanted so badly to go that I made it work.  What a memorable experience!  With the kids grown I had a new freedom, and a job, and managed to fit in trips to Lourdes, Paris, Assissi, Fatima,  Santiago de Compostela,  Auschwitz, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, with side trips to family in New Mexico, Indiana, Florida, Quebec, Toronto.      Then came the time when I thought I should walk away from my job, get on a bus,  and get arrested in Atlanta with Operation Rescue.  What a ride!  .Two  weeks in Fulton County Jail.  All told some 34 rescues and 19 arrests.  Multiple letters to the editor.  Weddings, a daughter killed, grandchildren. great-grandchildren.  the things of everyday life.   All told, it has been a woo-hoo trip!

Now, at 92, I have time to look around, at the panoply and  the vista and the people around me.  I find I want to know what makes them tick.  What do they live for, work for, dream of.  I look, for instance, at the presidential candidates coming forth at this time and try to figure out what they are seeking – power?  fame? or something they call “good.”  And what is it that they call good?  I am not the only one who thinks there is a marked divide in our candidates between those who serve  God and those who are godless.  I cannot understand the liberals who have no God. They cannot understand me.  I want to understand everything but just watching JEOPARDY demonstrates my very limited capacity.

So I pray.  There is a story about George Washington Carver that he asked God to teach him the secrets of the universe.  It is said that God told  him his brain was too small for the secrets of the universe but he would teach him about the peanut.  Eventually Carver was famous for his agricultural accomplishments but the tale about God seems to bear up when you learn that although Carver could have made much money from the patents he held but he would not cash in on them because they were from God!

Once I decided I could no longer accept the theory of evolution which fails by Darwin’s own criteria and received the death knell with understanding of DNA which Darwin knew nothing of (see previous blogs).   I started to listen to videos about atheists, theists, creationists, etc.  Kent Hovind and Ken Ham are creationists who take the bible  literally as divinely inspired   According to Genesis therefore the world was created in seven 24-hour days 6000 years ago.    God should know; he was there.  If we won’t believe that, why would be believe in the divine fatherhood of Jesus and other scriptures that we take literally?  ?  Of course, many  think the earth is billions of years old and they have good arguments for that.  I doubt I’ll ever get everything worked out to my satisfaction  on my own but I like to wonder and pray about it.   Right now I am pondering  a two-hour video by Hovind (https://youtu.be/KK3eh4Z5Ko4)  which  should provide food for thought for the rest of my life!  I am reminded that in  The Mystical  City of God by Venerable Mary of Agreda, written in the 1600’s, supposedly inspired by Mary, Jesus was conceived 5199 years after God made the world.

And that’s the trip so far.   Woo-hoo!