Some Things Were Better.

Last week I headed north on Thursday afternoon. The family was gathering at Lake Webster in Kosciousko County, where our extended family has a cottage, and then at Koontz Lake in Marshall County (where Sharon's folks live).

It was a fiercely hot day. I drove with the top up on the Miata and the AC running into I got to Carmel/Fishers. Then, I stopped to pick up some fast food, put the top down, cranked up the stereo to play some favorite 1950's and 1960's "doo wop."

The fields were full of corn and soybeans. The sun dropped low. I drove through small towns whose names weren't all that familiar. You see I have never really done much driving up the east side of Indiana on highways like 13 and 37.

A couple of things happened to me as I drove north. The one thing I want to mention in this blog entry is the awareness that in some ways -some ways- life was better 25 and 50 years ago.

I thought of that as I drove through the small town of Point Isabel. Like many small towns I suspect it had more life before big box stores showed up in the county seat and pulled business out of those small, independent stores. Then, I noticed just north of town an abandoned, three story brick schoolhouse. There was fencing around it to keep troublemakers out. But the building was still standing...the closing evidence of the wave of school consolidations across the midwest back in the 1960's and 1970's. People said children would get a better education if they went to a school of 600 instead of a high school of 150 or 200. People said students would have better curriculum, advanced placement classes, and so on. In many ways that is true. No doubt about it.

But something has been lost. All across the midwest students were going to small schools where the teachers knew them and they knew the teachers. Out of those small schools came business leaders and astronauts and physicians and successful farmers and teachers. They may not have had the opportunity to take advanced placement calculus or beginning Chinese but those small schools, in those small communities, were often places where students were known, given a place to grow up, and allowed to be. You didn't need to be an athletic superstar to play varsity basketball or volleyball the way you need to be to play at a school of 1-2,000. You didn't need to have a extraordinary voice to sing a solo in the high school's annual musical or the Spring concert.

It is ironic, now, to hear people talking about the ideal size of schools. It is ironic to hear educators talking about reducing the size of schools so that students don't get lost and the staff know them well enough to coach them...in life.

So the music on stereo is up loud. Some group whose name I can't recall is singing "Since I Don't Have You." The sun is hiding behind the rows of corn to my left as I head north. The brick schoolhouse is left behind. And I realize that in some ways things were better in the past. Does that mean I have been overcome by nostalgia or am a dinosaur? Or is it possible we've left some good things behind as we keep trying to catch the next "new thing?"

Healing Power of the Road.

I've had friends going through deep water. Each of them seemed to be headed down the road to visit a family member who was ill or they were packing for a new chapter. I sent several notes and said "May the road give you healing mercy."

I know Jesus is the source of all healing. I know blacktop and gravel can't lay hands on us and put together the pieces that are broken. However, there is something about the road that can offer healing mercy. The road can be a place where we discover the reality of loneliness: that's true. It can also be a place of healing.

There have been frantic, exhausted times in my life and I have set off down the highway with a Diet Coke, a stack of CD's, and a gym bag packed with clothes for a day or two. Something has happened to my heart and soul as I've driven along. I've followed the road as it rhymes it's way up and down the gentle hills of southern Indiana, I've listened to the hum of the tires on the blacktop, and something about being on the road calms me...heals me.

Music is often a companion. I'll sample different channels on XM. Early rock and roll, anthems by Queen, jazz, Springsteen all work together to do something good about the broken, tired places in me. Then, though, I turn the CD player off. I unplug the iPod. I shut down the radio. And the only music I hear is the music of the wind rushing past the half-opened window or the hiss of the tires on wet pavement. There is, I have discovered, a special melody that only the sounds of the road can provide.

There is that Irish blessing that says "may the road rise up to meet you." I don't know how exactly a road can "rise up" to meet us but maybe it involves some kind of healing power.

What Happens in Las Vegas?

I'm a new kid on the block. Never been to this city before. But here I am - babysitting for an 18-month old granddaughter while her parents attend a national convention of photographers.

Let me tell you what I've noticed. The hotels and casinos have the largest signs in the world, I suspect. The staff of the first-line resorts are extraordinarily hard working and gracious. The mountains in the distance are rugged and have snow on them. All sorts of people from all over the world find their way here. Last night, in an Italian restaurant in the MGM Grand, we met a couple from Denver who are aerial dancers - acrobats. He is a pastry chef for his day job. Like I said, interesting people.

Good moments? Watching the dancing fountains at the Bellagio thunder and turn while beautiful music played. Running into friends from New Haven United Methodist Church on the street. Getting out into Red Rocks State Park and seeing amazing sandstone that was once sand dunes.

Two last observations. I've wandered through one of the best casinos. I've studied people playing the machines and the "games." Passing row after row of people seated in front of slot machines, I turned to Sharon and said, "Show me one person whose eyes are alive...who looks like they are within shouting distance of joy...of fun." There wasn't one! Every single person looked half-alive...half-here...and sort of alone. Tonight I stood next to a man, wearing a worn looking sweatshirt, who bought $500 worth of chips, and then last them in the next seven or eight minutes. I watched the sweat beading up on his forehead as the chips disappeared. Most of the folks I see around here look half here. Half alive.

One last observation: on "The Strip" there are people wearing brightly colored sweatshirts that say "GUARANTEED GIRLS TO YOU IN 20 MINUTES." There are hundreds of these folks, standing up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, with these small cards -about the size of playing cards- with pictures of half-naked girls and a phone number. It is an awful thing. Every life reduced to a card...that lists what services can be purchased. The people on the sidewalk try to hand these cards to you while you walk by. By the end of the day the sidewalks of this city are littered with hundreds of thousands of these cards...and every one represents a broken life. A life used up by a desperate, seedy empire fueled by lust empty of love...sex with the soul removed.

I thought of those girls and what is happening to them, the other day, and began to cry. I remembered how Song of Songs (it's a book in the Bible) celebrates the gift of sexual love when our partner cherishes us...loves us. Each girl whose number is being handed out on the streets of this city deserves to be cherished...valued...loved well...as a child of God.

Okay...I'm looking forward to seeing Cirque's show, KA, before heading back to Indiana on Wednesday. And I'll remember the delight in Ella's eyes as we watched the fountains at the Bellagio. But I'll be unable to forget the lack of life I've seen in so many eyes...and the sidewalks littered with cards that each represent a life used up in cruel and desperate ways.