What strange times these are. Be careful on Limestone County roads. Where I fly, there’s usually vehicle noise, and lots of drivers glued to cell phone pictures. Trouble is, lots of those cell-addicted people are behind the wheels of 70-miles-per hour cars and don’t even see the road!

A fellow bird observed they are in a dream-like state. After all, dreams during sleep take normal time, and make it disappear. In dreams, you find yourself talking to grandpa who died over 60 years ago. I’ve discussed many a story with Abraham Lincoln, for example. (Yes, we Owls dream, too!) Dreams also make space meaningless. I’m forever dreaming of a “place” that is “the same.” The place becomes at times my high school; Mannheim, Germany; or maybe even a University parking lot. Sleep, what is it? Could it be a clue to this ever-fascinating brain we carry around; this cage of wonder which suggests there’s so much more to be discovered?

I like to think so. We have time to wonder about such mysteries. Each of us knows death comes one day. Flitting through ranks of cemetery tombstones, I pause to wonder, there especially. Grave processions of darkly dressed people follow a coffin to its “final resting place.” Are they resting? What if our candle just goes out? But what if our last place is one of awareness, “perchance to dream?” Many are convinced there is an afterlife, another state of being, or even a real place, as one American writer once quipped, “You know, like Brooklyn.” We are left to wonder, and not knowing, to treat the dead as sacred. Cemeteries were once known as sacred ground.

So, what right do we have to put someone in a cemetery before his natural time? The point of law is to make our society a balance of freedom and safety. We separate law breakers by keeping them away from society for a period of time. If we can’t keep our society safe without putting a prisoner to death, isn’t that an admission our prison system has failed? Prisons were once called “penitentiaries.’” That’s where someone was kept away from society, away to reflect on his crime. He would become “penitent.” Given his natural life, he might during his time in the penitentiary repent and save his soul. We once believed in good overcoming evil. The Italians in modern times even extended this to terrorists. They were considered “penitenti” when they gave up their ways, and reconciled with society. Once, in America, a missionary argued with a garrison officer not to take revenge on a captured native who killed a fellow churchman. The officer said it would prevent others from killing. Rather, said the missionary, “Allow the murderer to live that he may be saved.”

Our hope is that prisoners are changed after they’ve “paid their debt so society.” We could forgive. Nowadays for some crimes, we don’t forgive in Alabama. We execute people. Our state has failed to properly administer fatal drugs three times in the last year to those condemned to death. This occurs at a time when prisoners across our country are being found innocent of major crimes. They are literally exonerated through DNA analysis. Our governor says our duty to execute convicted prisoners is required, and if we can’t do it on a certain day, then we can keep at for a period of time until we get it right. What if we later discover the person executed was innocent? What is our duty then? I remember watching as a convicted murderer was to be executed, who’d reformed so completely that she blessed those about to execute her. We who live in this land have all lost someone to violent crime. Yet as long as the criminal is kept away from society, the duty of the law is fulfilled. Society is safe. If the law kills an innocent, all of us have failed our duty.

The terrorist group “Islamic State” captors used to take their prisoners in a cage to a field. Then they prepared to kill them. Gasoline was splashed on them, and matches lit. Then they would laugh and take the petrified prisoners back to their cells. They’d repeat this. Several times. Then one day they lit the gasoline and burned them all to death.

We somehow think it is right to have a window of time to try to get an execution right. If it doesn’t work, try, try again. What if the prisoner, who might even be reformed, prays on his way to the death chamber? What if they can’t finish him off because of problems with the drugs? He returns another day, going through the same horror of impending death, until he’s executed. What if we find out later he was innocent? What if he is guilty? What right have we to take away his natural time on this earth to repent?