Unlike the requirement in the Constitution that every two and four years we hold elections for our leaders, if you noticed, the time is dwindling down to the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 – a regularly expected transition.  There is a bit of hoopla about Father time overseeing the event with an ancient 2007 waiting to leave the stage and a brand new baby, 2008, waking up to its responsibilities of carrying on life apart from politics, wars and financial depredations of those who just can’t wait to get rich on the windfalls the march of time bring along with it.

I noticed this when I changed the date on the masthead of my THINKING ALLOWED essay heading.  That time keeps on a-changing – no matter what.  Every morning, when I wake – I write and the date changes while the subject matter – human concerns just keep on rolling along.  I notice things, though.  I read the papers every morning at breakfast and Science Times in the NYTimes caught my eye.  The lead article read, Laws of Nature, Source Unknown – Which came first: the order or the universe? And can science ever supply an answer?

Well, I just wrote the answer, time is a regularly expected transition and we have given it a name of 365 days and then a new 365 days name or, in this instance 2007 giving way to 2008.  If you think more personally about it, you do the same thing with your birth date.  Each 365 days from the first event you celebrate and add another year to that first one.  If you are lucky you can add them up to quite a number.  If unlucky, you lose out somewhere up the line.  But, we are stuck with time and its inexorable march into the future.  The past is known, our present a pain and the future, as yet, unknowable.

So, which came first? Is it order or the universe?  This bothers others but it does not bother me. I find the daily exercise of taking what nature has provided (at present we needed some heat in our usually air-conditioned home) to be enough. The philosophical or scientific questions about where it all came from and where it is going are just too much to think about this early in the morning.  I find that it is easier to compare candidates for our next President than to explain the problems of the universe.

But, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could elect a candidate who had all the answers and a compliant Congress who would put its seal of approval of a really sensible explanation for why we are here and where we are going with dignity and without fear of want or war?  Let us give that some thought. And, then, as Carol reminded me; there is the imponderable question about 2008 being a leap year.  In the wonderful order of things, we have to add this extra day.