Here we are in the last column before the odometer rolls over to mark another year. The past year has been notable for reasons both personal and otherwise. Ill begin with the first.

Its not the years, its the mileage, said Indiana Jones via the pen of Michigans own Lawrence Kasdan. In truth, I put a lot of mileage on this foul rag and bone shop of the heart during the past six decades, eventually suffering a relatively minor heart attack only weeks before my 60th birthday.

That was the downside of this momentous year. The upside was becoming a grandfather for the very first time and witnessing the publication of another daughters significantly researched first book. Im immensely proud of my offspring, and both indeed are worthy of a fathers adulation specifically and objective praise in general.

For reasons unknown, the Worlds Most Beautiful Woman has asked me to refrain from effusively praising her sheer awesomeness. Suffice it to say, each year spent by her side seems to get better and better.

Outside my immediate sphere, the world continues to spin. Acquaintances, family members, friends, and old classmates shuffled off the mortal coil, flourished or maintained their course.

Never before this year have I witnessed more the mercurial temperament of the cosmos. Likewise, never before have I embraced more the birthday lines of Dylan Thomas: Four elements and five senses/And man a spirit in love. Ahh, but I do go on!

Just as Thomas indicated in his lifes last completed work, faith has a peculiar way of returning with a vengeance, if thats the correct word. Faith as a child is easy, faith as an adult requires some heavy lifting. But once the muscles of faith are exercised and developed, it becomes once again second or even first nature.

Henceforth most everything seems a blessing. Faith awakened, it spins its morning of praise persistently and perpetually while coloring reality in the radiant hues of Gods limitless palette.

Sometimes, the coloring is inside the lines, my friends. Humankind explores and adds to its repository of knowledge regarding the natural world. After millennia of practice, were still repeating the same mistakes and following blind alleys, however. Unfortunately, were imperfectible human beings too often succumbing to easy solutions or clever machinations resulting in unforeseen consequences.

Other times, the colors leak outside the prescribed lines of what can be interpreted as normal into the supernatural and metaphysical. In this realm, a temporal utopia is recognized as impossible and human nature fatally flawed yet still kissed by the Divine.

For the time being, at least; the past century has witnessed a surge in movements led by those too clever by half. For them, religion was interpreted as inconvenient to their immediate agendas, disparaged as an opiate in their attempts to elevate half-understood science and crackpot theories.

While it is true some Christian religions have veered from the path of righteousness in pursuit of earthly glory in hellish ways, the secular obeisance to human institutions has resulted in dramatically worse the past 100 years. In fact, theres no legitimate comparison to be made.

The willing retreat of Christian faith from the public square or the forced banishment thereof in service of the separation of some invented church-and-state, either/or balderdash has provided to a large degree diminishing cultural returns from art and politics to society and human behavior.

When we aspire to a heaven on earth rather than aim to attain a berth in an eternal heaven, we forfeit the necessity to act properly in the moment and often instead embrace an ends-justify-the-means credo.

No government on earth can deliver on utopian promises, nor can any human. To paraphrase rock sage Pete Townshend, You gotta have faith in something bigger.

Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist and Midwest Regional Editor for The Center Square.

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Column: This year's last column | Opinion - The Morning Sun