What do we learn from that? Maybe we learn that life is never predictable.  Maybe we understand that a form of spiritual serendipity is the best attitude for today.

At least it was a good weekend for old Boston Celtic fans, when the team went up 2-0 against the Lakers.  Another reminder that we are entering the autumn of life is if we can remember round 1 of Celtic-Lakers featuring Russell vs. Chamberlain, as well as round 2 with Bird/McHale/Havlicek vs. Magic/Kareem.

Incidentally, I can't resist telling one of my favorite Linda/basketball stories.  We were graduate students living in Boston during that "round 2," and occasionally we scraped together enough money to go to a game at the old Boston Garden.  Linda had never been much of a basketball fan (despite the fact that her mother lived and breathed the game), but she went along cheerfully and tried to learn the players and the sport. 

My favorite player was John Havlicek, who was a particularly brilliant passer.  The announcer there in the Garden, in his most dramatic court side voice, always called out the player's name who scored, along with the player who got the assist — "Birrrdddd, from Havvvvvlicekkk!"

One game, Linda said, "I think it is so nice and personable that the announcer says who made the basket and tells his hometown too.  But so many of them seem to come from someplace called Havlicek.  Where is that, anyway?"

Parenthetically, how the years change things.  Linda, after living through the junior high, high school, and college games of our five boys, now knows more about basketball than I do, and believes, incidentally, that Boston will win again!

Seeker

Sometimes it's important to think beyond our own journeys and ponder the course that the society around us is taking. Where do you think our culture is headed?  Are we, as a human society, getting better or worse?  What are the trends and directions from the moral compass? 

If we were to measure by standards of sexual morality, or economic selfishness, or the widening gap between rich and poor, or by the hedonism manifest in our media and what we seem to be seeking, perhaps we would conclude that the western world is more evil than ever before. 

Which direction do you think America's church culture and society are headed?  ( I said "church culture and society," not "The Church.")

Tell me what you think. ( Richard@meridianmagazine.com )

Autumn

The political events and anniversaries of this past week have made me think a lot about the reality that I am entering the autumn of my life.  Forty years ago, it was the momentous year of 1968, and I was a young college student completely immersed and obsessed with politics.  And what a political year it was! 

I was working full time for George Romney, who entered the year as the front runner for the Republican Nomination.  I spent the cold, snowy winter in New Hampshire, organizing "Home Headquarters for Romney" and doing all I could to help him win the nation's first primary against Richard Nixon.

By spring, his candidacy was losing traction, partly because of a perfectly true but misunderstood comment that he had been brainwashed by the Administration and the generals about Vietnam, but mostly because he had been too occupied with the race riots that rocked Detroit the previous summer to become fully briefed or prepared on national and international issues. 

When he dropped out, several of us staff members joined the Nelson Rockefeller campaign because Romney supported him and most thought he was the best remaining chance to keep the nomination away from Nixon.  I worked through the late spring for Rocky, living in the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan and enjoying the fact that this campaign was not nearly as strapped for money as Romney's had been.  

I had to take a leave of absence in the summer to go to the required ROTC camp (that was keeping me out of the draft) in Ft. Benning, Georgia, and I spent a week back in Utah in between. It was during that week that Robert Kennedy (who had just won the California Democratic primary and looked to win the nomination from Hubert Humphrey) was assassinated in a kitchen passageway of a California hotel. 

As I watched from our TV in Logan, I wondered if the world was ending.  Everyone I believed in — in any way — in either party, was dropping out or getting killed.  The whole country seemed on edge. 

Two million people lined the tracks as RFK's body was taken by train from Los Angeles to Washington.  It was hard to sort out the prevailing mood, which hovered somewhere between shattered idealism and rebellion or revolution.  Everything seemed to be changing. 

I went to Army summer camp, then to Miami for the Republican convention.  My last job was putting thousands of copies of the Miami Herald on the seats of the convention hall early in the morning of the opening of the Republican convention. 

The headline was a poll that showed Rockefeller as a stronger chance to win the general election than Nixon, and we naively thought that fact might swing delegates to Rocky. But Rockefeller lost and Nixon won the nomination and then picked Spiro Agnew as his running mate. I went back to Utah State and then to BYU — and watched from those two happy valleys as the world kept exploding through the riots at the Chicago Democratic convention, where Humphrey got nominated.  The whole world seemed to be changing.

There is some sense of deja vu in watching politics this year, exactly 40 years later.  Another Romney of course — this time my friend Mitt, coming even closer than his dad did, and still angling for the possibility of the vice presidency (religion playing a far larger bid in his race than in his dad's, for some interesting reasons that I may speculate on later).  But think of some of the other parallels between 68 and 08:

• Vietnam then — and Iraq now
• RFK then, pushing for civil rights and an America where anyone of any color could do anything — and Obama now, fulfilling that dream
• Race revolution then — race inclusion now
• Liberal revolution and Great society moving left, but losing in the election — Obama's liberal ideas now, will history repeat?
• Feminism getting traction then (Yale admitted women for the first time in 68) — and Hillary representing the breaking of the glass ceiling now
• Environmental consciousness being born then (68 was the year of pesticide protests) — and Al Gore and the Green movement today
• Polls then showing big majorities saying America is headed in the wrong direction — and polls today showing exactly the same thing
• Gas prices and economic worries — repeating today

Is history repeating itself, or are we in such a different era that ‘68 and ‘08 can't be compared?