Shades of Gray

Blogging from East Bruce
Vonda Tedford-Keon

I finished yet another course paper and sent it off to my adjunct professor to grade. Working on a masters certificate in theology has been one long journey. The end is in sight though. I should be finished by May of 2008. It has been a time of spiritual growth and a lot of spiritual reflection. When I was an undergraduate student in the early 70’s at MUW, writing a paper usually consisted of regurgitating facts and making sure I didn’t plagiarize any information. There was a title page and then the body of the paper consisting of all the facts that I had learned; the citations and the endless ibid. It was all done on an old manual typewriter because there was no such thing as a word processor or desktop computer. Ahh the ‘good old days’ when things was actually black or white.

Now I have a computer and Word program to help me along so the paper writing is much easier. It’s just getting the content right that I am concerned with now. Now all of my papers are ‘reflection papers’. Those are the hardest kind of papers to write. It seems like just yesterday that I was young and life was so simple. I went off to college during the time of Viet Nam. I had friends that were drafted and many that sat in front of the TV during the nights that the lottery was pulling up the numbers, just praying that their number didn’t come up. It was easy to tell right from wrong and weak from strong. Things were actually black or white.

Growing up insulated by our rural community we never really lived with doubt or tasted fear. In our innocence and naivety, the answers always seemed so clear. We knew when a man should stand fight or just go along with the crowd. It was easy to know what was fair, what to keep and when to share. There were clues to tell you when someone was telling the truth or telling you lies. People didn’t sell out, they would find a compromise.
We were taught how to tell the foolish from the wise, and how to protect our hearts. We really cared about people then. Every thing was pretty much cut and dried. We went to church and learned our morals from the Gospels. Our parents punished us when we did something wrong. We surely didn’t sass our parents and live to laugh about it to our friends. Things were actually black or white

I look around today, and I see things that sadden me. What used to be cut and dried is no longer. What used to be simple is now complicated. What used to be fair is now unfair.
Today there is no day or night; today nothing is black or white. Now there are just gray areas. Only shades of gray. How sad.