the will of God

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In an effort to express "the will of God," three names were placed in a crystal bowl in Cairo today and a blindfolded altar boy drew out the name of the newest Coptic Christian pope: Bishop Tawadros.

The will of God

The intellectual mind may sniff and snicker and the devout mind may bow its head in reverence, but somehow I doubt that there is a mind anywhere that does not yearn in little and large ways to be at peace with some instrument wider than itself.

If the rituals of the intellect can't reach and the rituals of the church can't reach ... wouldn't it be wonderful to be on the same peaceful page as a past that cannot be grasped, a future whose particulars can never be known to perfection, and a present which, when viewed carefully, slips away like quicksilver?

The intellectual mind reaches out with its rituals of logical and scientific thought. It accedes hopefully but without peaceful success to the gods of right and wrong, true and false... the known world.

The devout mind reaches out with its rituals of crystal bowl and blindfolded altar boy. It accedes hopefully but without peaceful success to the gods of some unnameable-yet-named essence ... the unknown world.

Does it matter much that the world is known or the world is unknown? I don't think so. Each yearning heart stands and equally good chance of asserting a peace that was never missing. And similarly, each yearning heart stands and equally good chance of asserting some awful horrors.

I think it was former Yankees baseball general manager Casey Stengel who once said, "If people won't come out to the ballpark, you can't stop them." If the intellectual mind won't come, you can't stop it. If the devout mind won't come, you can't stop it.

The bat, ball, glove and uniform of peace are not somewhere else.

And the ballpark of an assured peace is not just ballpark peace.
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