‘Moonlight Drive’

He heard it first from a song by Jim Morrison of “The Doors,” one of his favorite rockers of the ’70s. “Moonlight Drive.” The song played in his mind as he drove his daughter and her mother from the airport. It might have been because the full moon glowed orange in the black sky. It reflected on the waters of the strait as they crossed over the bridge. Beautiful like the two women riding with him.

The daughter claimed she was liberal. But what does that mean? Good question. The mother quickly replied, “It means you are not conservative.” But the answer had the expected drawback of defining something by what it is not. It begged to be clarified.

Conservatives do not want change. They are suspicious of it. Don’t expect the conservatives to say so. They are more likely to say they only want change to come slowly and carefully. And then there is the consequent claim that there are fundamental assertions that cannot ever change.

The Catholic Church is an institution decidedly conservative. If it will change at all it will do so inside a timeline measured not in years but in centuries. But it is wrong to claim it will never change. Such a claim can hardly be scientific. There is entropy. Everything in the universe moves. Nothing is immutable. And if nothing in the church ever changes then we would have no need for a Pope who is the final arbiter of change inside the church. Still, conservatives like to think the fundamentals of God’s laws are there forever. Even so, “Christ will come again.” And as ever before he will come to change things radically.

“I am liberal just like my father,” she said. But the father replied, “No, I’m more liberated than liberal. Though not libertine.”

“What?” the daughter interjects. “What does that mean?”

“To be liberated is to be free and enlightened.”

In the old days, the best a woman could ever dream to be was  a housewife. Otherwise, she would be a prostitute, a woman of ill-repute. Unless of course she was royalty and then she could be a Duchess or Princess or Queen. They were not expected to play in sports or succeed as professionals. Now they are everywhere. They have liberated themselves. The daughter nodded her head. “I like that, therefore I must be liberated.”

“Like your father.” The mother agreed. “Though he cannot be feminist since only women can be feminists.”

“But he is not  libertine.”

“A libertine is one who obeys no rules. In other words ‘ki-at’ in Bisaya.”

“I was once libertine.” The father continued, giving the mother a quick glance. “But I am retired now.”

The daughter takes time to think before concluding, “That sounds very much like Gani.” (Gani is her older brother.)

“Conservative, liberal, liberated, libertine describe a good range of mindsets related to human behavior and attitudes. But they do not really describe what a person truly is or can be. Especially nowadays when things have become so complicated. A liberal can be conservative without knowing it.”

“And vice versa, I expect,” the daughter replies.

“To be honest, we are all safer with libertarian,” The father finally said.

“What is that?”

“A libertarian is one who seeks for everyone to be free.”

He wondered if Jim Morrison fit into the category. He decided he was more like “anything but conservative.” He sang to himself:

Moonlight drive,

Come on baby, take a little ride.

Moonlight drive.

He did not turn off the headlights to celebrate the passage in the song as he once did. But as ever before he wondered what the bridge would look like without any other light but moonlight.