We do have choices to make.

As inhabitants of earth, we have learned over time that there is a polarity that governs our home planet. The north pole is at one end and the south pole at the other, with every earthly thing revolving between them. Turn, turn, turn. We are not typically aware of the planet's polarity and its spinning, but we do notice certain effects: the pointing of a compass, the weather, the seasons. We discern, and learn about, the somewhat predictable turning of earthly events. Days turn into nights, nights into days. Clouds turn into sunshine, sunshine into rain. Summer turns into winter, winter into summer. Turn, turn, turn. Light and dark, hot and cold, dry and wet. Turn, turn, turn.

Just as we notice with regularity the visible world's polarity and its resultant events, we discern also a polarity within the unseen world of our thoughts, our minds, our souls. Good and bad, right and wrong, well-intentioned or ill-advised--but this polarity is not as easily identified as the physical one. And we humans have much more trouble in agreeing upon how to evaluate such as that.

Every now and then, however, something happens that attests to the undeniable presence of evil in our good world. Take, for instance a look at the shooting that happened yesterday in Tuscon. No doubt about it: what the guy did was wrong.

He made a bad choice, and the consequences of it are bad. Several innocent people are dead. What do you call that? I call it evil. The shooter was not listening to his better angels. No, he was following the counsel of his badder angels.

You don't think there are angels? Think again. There is an unseen world out there, within us and without us, because we cannot, you know, even in our great wisdom, see everything. When the invisible universe intersects with the physical world, stuff happens. Shit happens. But it doesn't just happen, people make it happen.

So there is this big right and wrong thing going on in the universe, and on our planet. And its true that we see every shade of combination between those two in this world--shades of gray and all that ambiguity problem. But even though the choices that we make are not simple because of the ambivalence, we are all of us moving in one direction or the other. Each of us is moving steadily, whether we understand it or not, toward the good pole or the bad pole.

And when it dawns on each of us that we are in an unseen moral weather pattern that blows us one way or the other--toward the good or toward the evil, we can begin to make daily choices that will change our direction.

If that young fella in Arizona had made better choices along his life-path, he would not have done the destructive deed that he did yesterday.

What about you? Which way are you headed?

This polarity in our world is a defining characteristic of our universe: positive and negative, 0 and 1, etc...that makes everything happen. The One who coded it into existence made a choice to create a physical universe that utilizes polarity as it working principle.

But here's the deal. Included within that divine choice is a certain amount of choice that is delegated--yes, given-- to the objects of that godly attention (us)... Or, we could say, the objects of God's affection (you and me.)

Because God loves us, God has given us the power of choice. We are not computers, but children of God, if we want to be. So we can choose to move toward the Creator, or away. Which way are you headed?

Here's a warning though: one result of the bad choices that so many make is that some who choose the good get mistreated and abused, maybe even crucified. One in particular did get crucified, but he raised from being dead just to prove the point that here is a way of light through this present darkness.

Glass half-Full