They Woke Me With Their Screams

Monday morning I thought the world was coming to a raucous end (and I'm not an apocalyptic sort) when this incredibe earth-shaking, lingering thunder woke me up. Which is remarkable since I was wearing earplugs. And I live three stories up.

I moved my gravity-resistant (well, not really, I just didn't want to get out of bed) body to the window to see what all the hullabaloo was. I was scared and thought that some military thing was happening, or maybe some kind of end-of-the-world crap.

Because the only other time I've heard this sound--besides the Space Shuttle taking off while camping nearby overnight with hundreds of other people, and mosquitoes--was growing up on military bases. And when fighter jets scream overhead during 4th of July parades, like the Air Force Thunderbirds flying in formation.

It was the 1960's and we lived on Bitburg airbase in Bitburg, Germany. I was around 4-years old when we moved there from Taiwan, and the base would run the B-52 Bombers out at night, practicing precision bombing maneuvers. It was loud. It was terrifying. It was the Cold War, for Pete's sake. And I remember being really scared a lot in the beginning. And you couldn't help but notice because they were flying out at night when things are supposed to be quiet so you can actually, oh I don't know, sleep.

To paraphrase the Air Force Website, "The Air Force's Strategic Air Command (SAC) became the preeminent instrument of American defense strategy. Standing continuously alert for the rest of the Cold War, SAC's arsenal of bombers, such as the long-range B-52 Stratofortress, was joined in the 1960s by intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as the Titan and Minuteman. Together with the Navy's missile-launching submarines, these powerful weapons comprised America's nuclear-deterrent triad." http://airforce.com/learn-about/history/part3/.

I guess with enough sleep deprivation you learn to sleep through anything because after awhile I didn't notice the incessant thundering anymore. I learned to tune it out just like I stopped hearing the ocean when we lived along a Florida beach. Not to mention, I also have the ability to tune out whining children--gift from God preserving what's left of my sanity.

So when I looked out my bedroom window, all that was visible were the white contrails streaking across the blue sky. And I was left to wonder what the hell the skies were up to this Monday morning.



Credit: photo courtesy of http://www.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.asp?galleryID=163&page=2

It's All God

While showering this (Sunday) morning, I got to musing on how religion can be like the military-- institutions with rules designed to protect and defend against something; usually something bad.

We use the military to protect ourselves from seen enemies and religion to protect ourselves against unseen enemies, which often ironically includes ourselves.

We even divide religions into segments: Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals and Christian Scientists like we separate the U.S. military into Air Force, Navy, Army Marines, and Coast Guard not to mention the elite forces like the Green Berets or Navy Seals.

Holy cow, we seem to find a lot of ways to separate ourselves from each other.

But what if, there is nothing to defend or protect ourselves from? What if it's all God? Everything? Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, and all the rest? In our quest for protection and defense, are we actually just fending off Life itself?

What if we don't have to GO anywhere or DO anything to BE WITH God? Maybe God is with us, all of us; right here, right now, anywhere and everywhere we happen to find ourselves. And that could be at church, the laundry room, a battlefield, a bar, or a meadow. In a temple, a cathedral, a mosque, a chapel, a pagoda or a forest.

Maybe we are already okay; safe and blessed and protected. Maybe we already are free.



Credit: photo courtesy of free digital photos