TURN TURN TURN

“VANITY OF VANITIES, SAYS THE TEACHER, VANITY OF VANITIES! ALL IS VANITY. WHAT DO PEOPLE GAIN FROM ALL THE TOIL AT WHICH THEY TOIL UNDER THE SUN? A GENERATION GOES, AND A GENERATION COMES. BUT THE EARTH REMAINS FOREVER.

I didn’t mean to put that in all caps but I’m too tired to retype Ecclesiastes 1:2-4.

I pushed through the last six pages of Proverbs to get to Ecclesiastes a few minutes ago. I’ve been looking forward to reading this book.

I wrote a post in 2014 with this phrase baked into its heading. I revisited it just now but didn’t have the patience to re-read it. Way too Stream of conscientiousness. It tells how I became a fifth wheel (or third) when two of my old gradeschool acquaintences mind melded at my mention of the Byrds’ pop song Turn, Turn, Turn. Its a riff on the verse in Ecclesiastes that begins “For every thing there is a season.” Too bad it wasn’t my season.

My friends hadn’t known each other till I somehow got them together on one of my summer sojourns back from Minnesota to Kansas. They were both Ace students (I think that’s an apt description) and each was the respective President of their High School’s Senior Class, one at the venerable Topeka High the other at Topeka West. I felt like an inadvertant match maker when I learned later that they went to one of their high school Homecoming dances together.

Serves me right not knowing anything about the Bible.

About the author