The Times--They Are a Changing

Although I was never a ‘hippie’—certainly not of ‘the New Left’-- I lived through the so-called ‘dawning of the age of Aquarius’ in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s. I heard the music and saw the images and even lived for a couple of years during the peak of this cultural revolution on the Big Sur coast of California (for an entirely different reason than those of the psychedelic set dragging down the road below my house).  I saw the daily hitch-hiker’s parade of dirty, bedraggled, back-pack-carrying young people, my age, on their quest for who-knows-what they hoped to find at Big Sur which they didn’t find a day or two north in Haight-Ashbury. 

 

They wanted freedom, not ‘the establishment’; they wanted ‘peace’ but not responsibility; they wanted a ‘voice’ as a non-conformist, but became part of a mob. They wanted nirvana, but didn’t have a goal, a clear vision, or the intellectual tools to get there.

In the end they settled for ‘a time’ with drugs, sex, and rock-and roll—and ended up with angst, disease, and deeper disillusionment. 
  

Bob Dylan, and others, sang this song, prescient in ways that I don’t think they envisioned, what may have been an existential ‘hymn to the times’—which indeed were changing: 

Come, gather round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving
Then you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a changing

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pens
And keep your eyes open, the chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon, the wheel's still in spin
And there's no telling who that it's naming
Oh, the loser will be later to win
For the times they are a'changin'

Come senators, congressmen, please head the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be her that has stalled
There's a battle outside and it's ragin'
will soon shake your windows
And rattle your hall
For the times, they are a changing

Come mothers and fathers all over this land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old role is rapidly aging.
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand
For the times they are a changing

The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one will later be fast
And the present now will soon be the past
The order is rapidly fading
The first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a changing.

The times they still are changing, and there are many frightening  portents looming ahead.  I believe prospects seem to be more bad than good—at least for some time.  Some lines have been redrawn, as Dylan said, and people have been and will yet be forced to choose where they stand—morally, intellectually, religiously, ecologically, politically, humanely.   

Wars and rumors of wars will engulf not just the chronically disrupted Near East and the African continent but likely every other continent and people—including us.  Who would have thought, thirty years ago, there would be drug wars on our southern border and immigration wars where refugees are fleeing their corrupt and bankrupt nations south of us?  There will be wars of the ‘have-nots’ against those who have something; wars of the dying against those of the living;  increased border and immigration wars; financial wars; health care wars.

No, it will not just be about political boarders between countries, and not just about oil, or sovereignty, but about the fundamentals: water, and air, and food, and public health and human rights and resources—and about religion, a religion of Life and a religion of death.

People have questions about these things they need to stop avoiding and need to settle in their minds and in their hearts and not just leave it to politicians or terrorists who have their own wars going on.

   

Look carefully at what you believe and why you believe it.  Look at your source of information and who you trust for guidance and security.  Revisit history and dust off the old values and take a good look at them and see their potential for reinstatement. 

 

The rise and fall of nations and civilizations has been a never-ending cycle, but for all of us, and for this world, it will one day end.  The answers as to ‘why?’ are there in the history and in prophecy.

The only questions to be answered, for me, are ‘when’ will it happen in our own neighborhood?  And what can we yet do about it? 

 

Escapism is not an option.