  Westwind is a curvy street that goes up and down hills. My son was enjoying watching the sun set over and over each hill. He'd say "there's the sun! " and then, "where'd the sun go? " I was trying my best to explain to my 2 3/4 year-old boy that we live on a ball called Earth (he'd say like the earthship, and get real excited) and the ball turns all the time. I'd make my hands into balls and move them around each other saying right now the ball is turning so that we can't see the sun anymore. My mind got hung up on the idea that to a 2-year-old, it makes so much more sense to think the sun is moving and the earth is steady. That's the world Copernicus encountered so many years ago when he introduced the heliocentric view.
I felt such a sense of kinship with Copernicus as I pondered how people like to hold on to their view of the world, their sense of the way things are. Change hurts. Each year I seem to find a moral the universe (or God, via the universe, as I reluctantly claim my Christian heritage) brought to me. A few years ago the moral was to get over my self-centered self and put aside pride. Still working on that one.
Year before last, it was LOVE, the purpose of life. This year has been change. That's how I found myself naming my blog for the parable Heraclitus told to explain the nature of change. His exact words were: Nothing endures but change. Therefore, one cannot step into the same river twice. Combining the morals of past years, I have to argue that nothing endures but love and change, but I digress.
Heraclitus first found me in college. John and I had been dating for two years when we decided to take a class together. It was Ancient Philosophy taught by Professor Springer. I thought Springer was such a crock. I detested him. At the time, we were pretty devout charismatic Christians, and I was angry that, though the syllabus defined the scope of the class as entirely BC, Springer spent so much time dissing Jesus, or rather, Jesus' followers, the modern day Christians.
It didn't help that taking a class together was probably the worst idea John and I ever had. We couldn't even agree on where to sit in the room (he always sat in the front, and I always sat in the back). These days, I find much more in common with Springer than not. I understand the disdain professors must have for students who come to them completely unexamined. They haven't questioned anything of their belief system, political, religious, or otherwise. These professors have to play every card in their deck to encourage self-examination.
That, after all, is the point of the liberal arts education, right? Teach them critical thinking and they can do anything! But see, here is a perfect example of the river. I can hear Heraclitus' words an infinite number of times, but the ears that hear them will never be the same. The place I am in life, the mood I'm in, the day I've had, the book or website I just had, will always make the message just a little different.
From all the search strings I get hits off of on the phrase, I can tell the universe sent the memo out to many others than just me. I guess the movie The Hours mentioned it, plus there is a 70s movie and book by the name. I walked into a coffee shop in Taos a few months back and saw the words painted in giant, dramatic letters above the cash register. I'm not jealous of my cosmic message, I'm glad I share circulation with so many great people. I wish everyone would tune in. So change.... I change, the kids change, George Bush and Howard Dean change. People die. Others are left to live.
I found myself thinking about change last Sunday when I went to my mom's church. I thought about the famous time for everything scripture. A time for war and a time for peace. I can be ok with that, if I could just find the time for peace. Where is it? Doesn't anyone want to find it? And that's how we get back to Copernicus. No one believed in his heliocentric world view, but that didn't make it wrong. That's how it is with peace. People don't believe it's possible to live in a world where giant international problems are resolved with diplomacy, policy, and aide because it rocks their belief of how the world works. They don't want to question everything, and questioning any one thing so big just might make them. Copernicus knew just how dangerous challenging world views was, so he circulated his views anonymously.
A hundred years later, Galileo came along and took the idea into the endzone, thanks to the telescope. Of course, maybe Galileo should have followed Copernicus' anonymity trend because he died excommunicated and alone. But he died for the cause of truth, the cause I know those of us who believe in peace are living and dying for today. It will take generations, but maybe we can change the way everyone else looks at things, we just can't lose faith that things will change. 
