Altered States

Do you remember the 1980 movie "Altered States" with William Hurt. All I remember is the sensory deprivation tank. Based on a novel by Paddy Chayevsky, it is the story of a professor who attempts to explore deep levels of consiousness with this "tank" and hallucinegenic drugs. My guess is the key factor in this experiement is the drug part.

My focus is on sensory deprivation. Sometimes I just want to shut myself off - my mind races; I worry, think, judge, plan, organize, wonder, surmise, dream, and obsess. Yesterday's anniversary of the OK City bombing sent me whirling. As much as I recall the day of the bombing, even greater is the experience of visiting the memorial there with a youth group of high school kids. It is a somber, sad and quiet place. It is far from peaceful. The chain link fence surrounding an empty playground, the chairs placed on the site of the Federal Building, with the names of each person killed, larger chairs for the adults and small ones for the children. The glimmering, shallow, reflection pond with 9:01 at one end and 9:03 at the other - 2 minutes of hell, a lifetime and beyond of agony. The fence with items left by visitors. Becky, a girl in my group, left her favorite necklace - a 15 year old girl... from central IL was so moved by this place that she left her most prized possession as a memorial. There were dolls, items of clothing, band aids, hair clips, we were literally leaving whatever we had on our person to somehow connect with this place and try to replace some of the emptiness with humanity.

I get so overwhelmed with the senseless hatred, fear and ignorance in our world that I can barely function. Who among us is so perfect that we can spend so much time tossing out judgement, rumor, slander and in come cases, execution? Why can't we focus on doing something good, saying something kind, purposefully leading our lives for the betterment of this earth that God has given us? Well, of course, many of us, can and do. But the force of evil is strong - Satan works through men and women in every continent, every faith, every color and every political party. Sometimes his name is Tim.