Indeed it does seem to be the end of an era doesn't it? Four years with Hot Rod (a.k.a. President Sawatsky of Messiah College) and I thought he'd be president there forever. It's amazing how life is so random on the cosmic scale, yet seems so coincidental on the microbe level. Why me for his final four years? Why should I be one of the last to experience his reign? Why is it that when we think about someone we haven't in a long time, their name seems to surface the very next day? Why is it on the day we decide to not go fishing we hear about the largest fish ever caught? How can life be so huge, yet pay such close attention to each and everyone one of us that it seems the world revolves around us? That guy you passed on the highway the other day, you didn't think twice about the person behind the wheel and him having some sort of conscience what-so-ever. It was just another "thing" in your life. An obstacle to get around. How could anyone else out there actually think and react the way you do? Yet they all do, and life has an incredible way of making everyone feel like the universe is tuned just for them. There is only one explanation and it does not have to do with complete and utter randomness. That sort of randomness would never allow two out of 6 billion people who attended kindergarten to meet up again someday in a cafe half way across the world. Sorry, that is not random, that is not chance. Yet it is cleverly disguised. Real chance is insignificant and never acknowledged. How could it be? It's chance, it's random, it's pushed aside. Next time you think, "Wow, what's the chance of that happening?" instead think, "Of course! Why wouldn't that happen? Why would I not be the center of the universe?" It's not egotistical, it's very true. We are all the centers, but my center does not and can not possibly acknowledge your center. Our task is to acknowledge our center, but make that attempt at realizing everyone else has that center too.

I wish the best for you Hot Rod, and may you settle into your center as some day our paths will cross again. Not by chance however, but by life.