Merry Christmas

It's been a while since I last visited my thoughts upon this page. This time of year is usually less geared toward creative pursuits, and it's not just because of the imminence of Christmas. The truncated days, the cold air, the entrapment of snow and ice all seem to conspire to make me want to just sit on the couch and watch Seinfeld reruns while munching on granola cereal.

Call it the winter blues. Call it SAD. Call it whatever you want.

It all leads to the same thing.

It would appear that we are an angry people growing angrier every year.

The recent shootings in Connecticut would bear witness to that. To call the young man who perpetrated that heinous act disturbed would be to damn him with faint praise. He was totally self-absorbed; he committed a crime of absolute selfishness and depravity.

He was evil because that's what evil is.

People are blaming it on guns, video games, mental illness, bad parenting. The arguments have gotten shrill in some corners.

I suspect there are people in this country who view the evil one (I refuse to mention his name) as some sort of conquering warrior who broke with convention and marched to his own dark, glorious drumbeat. Can there really be any disagreement with my suspicion?

Four elements comprise humans; the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.

The intertwining of these four elements is complex and varied. Each one requires stimulation, exercise, growth, and the lack of proper stewardship of any of the elements leads to problems.

Atheists will deny this vehemently, but because we are spiritual beings, our inmost self cries out for a god. If that need is not fulfilled by God, then any other god will do. It may be money, power or celebrity.

It may be self.

But we all have something we worship because we are spiritual beings.

That was the whole point of what the serpent in the garden of Eden was trying to do to the human race through Adam and Eve - get them to take their focus off God and place it on themselves through temptation.

It's really amazing that the human race has lasted as long as it has given that its utter focus on self leads to utter chaos. How can it be otherwise?

When all that matters is ourselves, then it changes our view of the world and all our fellow travelers.

You can call it sin; I do.

And what we witness on a regular basis, not just with massacres of innocent children, but through the daily headlines of war, crime, debauchery, greed and self-absorption is the result of the entropy of sin.

Mankind, on its own without the power of God, will always settle down to its lowest common denominator. The laws of thermodynamics, though originally conceived to describe the physical world, work well within the spiritual realm also.

We are on a direct course to our own destruction.

Maybe with a bang. Maybe with a whimper. But unveering, nonetheless.

God help us.