A Journey of Three Days



I drove out to Pittsburgh Thanksgiving on the Pa. Turnpike.

It is a road that is a monopoly because of the mountains. There is no other way to get out West without facing tons of local traffic and poor roads that go over the mountains rather than what the Turnpike does...tunneling through. Mucho dynamite was used back in the day. It is still a curvy and hilly drive.

In the two decades tradition of heading out to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving to visit my brother and his family, I have learned that it is best to stagger the trip a bit to travel on Thanksgiving and either come back Saturday or Monday. Sunday is a killer traffic jam because of aforementioned monopoly. I can't believe that the extra day is worth the hassle.

Not my idea of starting the holiday season off with peace and serenity. Three days also doesn't wear out the welcome. Each day I had this delicious dish that Dawn, my brother's wife, prepared. It is really every food that I love best for Thanksgiving.

Three days seems to be the ideal balance out in Pittsburgh. One day to, one day to chill, and one day back. I had mentioned the family cabin a couple of blogs ago and what keeps me from visiting over the weekends is that it is just too far to drive on a Friday night. A full three day excursion solves that problem.

Through the mountains today, just as last year, I tuned into the Catholic station that broadcasts on the AM dial out there. It was a homily from Pope Francis on spiritual development in life being a journey, not some mechanistic process. Jesus is the To (the future), the From (the past), and with Us (the present).

While out in Pittsburgh, I watched a NOVA program on PBS about Einstein's work. From what I got from it, one of the findings and insights he had is that time can be bent by gravity, what is called Space Time and that Time is very much a dimension just as Height, Width, and Depth.

In order to locate something in Space, we need to know all four variables. If we believe the miracles of the Bible (I don't assume all reading this blog do. I do), they are often some combination speeding up of time and changing or creating mass, like the making of wine in Cana or the feeding of the 4,000 and 5,000 through the infusion of energy. These events all happened in time but time was toyed with in some deep mysterious manner. Time is just not as constant as we might surmise.

It makes sense that Jesus as God was outside of Space Time but also in Space Time as Man. I am not sure I can go a whole lot farther with these thoughts, but the Cross existed in all four dimensions. Communion is the substantive resolution of the Fall (a moral gravity?) and it is called the Mass. The meal of Past, Present, and Future. And, I will leave it at that.  

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