To Set Coordinates

"Do you know where you're going to, do you know what life is really showing you, where are you going to, do you know?" So goes the haunting words of the song that Diana Ross sang years ago. So, do you know?

I've been told that one of the first things a pilot does before ascending into the clouds is to "set the coordinates." These coordinates determine where the plane is headed. If you set the wrong coordinates but you follow them you will end up "someplace else" even though you stayed the course.

I see this in religion. Often people ask me why they cannot communicate with someone else about faith. As I listen I realize that the two people talking are in fact traveling "beside" each other but that their coordinates were set to different directions. They are talking "religion" but they are not going to end up at the same place. No, I'm not talking the "heaven or hell" thing. I mean that the more they talk the more they are going to drift apart because their coordinates are set.

If you want an example do the old "creationism vs. evolution" thing. If you take the first two chapters of Genesis as science you set your coordinates that way. If you understand these chapters as a description of "why" God created the cosmos rather than a description of "how" then you set your coordinates thus.

We have a lot of people screaming at each other of late about such things as health care and immigration who have different coordinates. So we have people screaming across the great divide.

How I wish that we could at least acknowledge the different coordinates rather than yelling about how wrong the direction is. So much for that.

How about a caterpillar update. I blogged about caterpillars the other day in the abstract...you know a story about caterpillars... but we have a whole host of real Monarch caterpillars literally devouring the parsley in our front yard. I've never seen anything like it. They have eaten "to the ground" three parsley plants. This could sound very destructive but the truth is that Betsy intentionally put the plants there because she knew two things: Monarch caterpillars like parsley and Betsy likes Monarchs.

She set her coordinates a few months ago when she planted the parsley. See and you wondered how I would work that in...I'm a preacher....I can work anything in...
What are your coordinates? You can bet those caterpillars know where they are going. I can't wait till they "get there." .....butterflies...butterflies....
Bless you,
Jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org