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We’re excited by the magazine’s new look, new feel and new material.
by Jim Gilbert
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11/01/2004
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It’s a steamy afternoon in late July. Rising and billowing over the Everglades,
a big thunderhead is inching its way east toward the coast with a promise of
cooling rain in its towering shadows and deepening rumbles.
These
storms are a ubiquitous part of summer life in South Florida. They charge
violently in with tree-shaking gusts, blinding lightning displays, deafening
peals of thunder and torrential downpours. Within minutes the storms are often
gone, and the sun begins to shine as if they never happened.
I love the
Zen-like quality of these storms, which remind me that change is the very
essence of existence, that nothing lasts forever. It’s a concept that requires a
bit of intention to grasp, living as we do in such a solid world full of
tangible things. But the older and, hopefully, wiser I become, the more I
appreciate that what is real and lasting is not the physical world around us –
houses, streets, airports, offices, cars – but the ideas that fill our heads and
hearts. The Agora in Athens is all but gone, but the idea of democracy is
growing stronger each day. Religions have come and gone, along with countless
houses of worship, but the notion that we are one with a benevolent Godhead is
just as alive and real as it was in the times of Moses, Christ and
Muhammad.
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