The title of the Zombies' marvelous album from 1968/69 entitled "Odessey and Oracle" (sic) puts one's life in two-word perspective that means a lot to me.

We are all on an odyssey of sorts, as Odysseus/Ulysses was in Homer. There are headwinds, zephyrs, tailwinds; and more to the point, storms, whirlpools and icebergs. No one could really disagree with the picture of our human experience as an odyssey, the forms and circumstances of which are quite hidden to us -- as Thomas Cole's epic visual parable "The Journey of Life" conveys with jaw-dropping perspicacity and prescience -- at the start. And hidden almost all along the way, in fact! So yes, sans doute, life is an odyssey.

And we need -- I mean need urgently -- an oracle. Which is to say, we require a Word/words from outside ourselves to orient us and re-orient us. If we think that we ourselves can provide the required wisdom to understand and interpret our misfires, let alone our successes, that conception proves untenable over time. We need an oracle.

Very recently I ran into an oracle -- a person, I mean, who stated an astonishing conviction concerning a current event, and whom I trust. In other words, I trust this person as a kind of oracle to interpret the present in the light of God's overriding Purpose. I was struck quite speechless by this preacher's certainty concerning something, shall we say, Very Big. Am still not sure whether I believe her, in fact -- she ministers at a small store-front church in west Orlando. But I take her seriously. The point is, I felt I was being addressed by an oracle.

We need not only an interpreting confidence in the Divine Purpose behind our odyssey, but we also need an oracle to navigate us towards "Our Year" (The Zombies, 1968/69), that New Day of God's unfolding -- let alone shattering. LUV U!