1492.  It's one of the most pivotal years in human history.  Humans of two hemispheres, neither of whom had been aware of the other, suddenly were, almost overnight, finding themselves confronting worlds that, literally, blew their collective minds.  No one would ever be the same.

     Sadly, however, although 1492 may have been a momentous and lucrative year for many Europeans, it was a terrible one for the natives of the Americas.  Hence, although earlier this week the U.S. recognized Columbus Day, some have suggested that it is perhaps more appropriate to term it "Indigenous Peoples Day."  After all, it is the natives of the Americas who, far more than the Europeans who slaughtered them, deserve to be remembered.  It is they who have suffered most.

     The worst of it is that in too many instances this slaughter was justified in the name of Christianity.  It was an awful stain on the love of God.

     Historian Erna Paris once observed that, "Attaching God to history is the most powerful nationalism of all."  Whenever we try to juxtapose God and the history we are unconsciously creating, we erect a line we cannot possibly cross:  the boundary between what is here, and what we think should be, the difference between the visible speculations of finitude and the hidden certitudes of infinity.  We falsely think we can speak for God.

     Whatever your perspective, use this week to remind yourself of your so very limited view of what is real and true.

      In this era of the so-called Robber Barons of the technology industry, one might think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby.  It's a story of hubris, massive and myopic social hubris driven by an equally blind financial hubris, two currents of a mistaken pride that overturned a life to a point beyond redemption.

     Some of you may work in the technology industry, some of you may hold stock in the technology industry.  All of us benefit from knowing and using it.  Even as I write this blog, I am acutely aware that I would not be able to do so without the help of Google and its parent company Alphabet.  And I wager that many of you order items from Amazon with some degree of regularity, and appreciate its seemingly efficient service.

    Few of us take time to look beneath the surface of the industry.  Neither did Gatsby take time to consider the implications of his financial and social success.  He just lived in them, repercussions and consequences aside.  As do, to a point, many of us.  We do not often take stock of how thoroughly dependent we are on industries that, although they proclaim to be making our lives better, rarely do they allow us to stop and deliberate about what "making our lives better" really means.  As they define it?

    Fitzgerald's enduring masterpiece reminds us that yes, we all appreciate social connections and technological ease, but it also reminds us how little we know where they will, in the long run, lead to.  How are we to measure the fruits of worldly "success"?

    Surely not by the success itself.  Because Gatsby valued his world by the values of that world, he fell, badly.  As will, unless we look up from our busy lives, we.

    Ease of living is not the point.  Meaningfulness is bigger than next day delivery.

 

     

 If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we do not always do the right thing.  No one among us eludes our own fallenness.  We all, as many religions put it, sin.  We all do not always do what pleases or sustains the divine fabric of the universe.

 

Few religious groups understand this as well as the Jews.  Beginning tonight, Jews around the world celebrate Yom Kippur, the "Day of Atonement."  On this night, Jews acknowledge their sinfulness before God.  They admit their wrongdoing, own up to their prevarications. And they repent.  They tell God they are sorry for disobeying and violating his commandments and laws.  Then they announce their intention to begin anew to live lives that please their creator.

     So the Jews have done for many centuries, and so they will do for many centuries more.  Their faith remains.

     Although we may not agree with the specifics of the Jewish approach, and though we may not see wrongdoing in quite the same way, we must all admit that, to repeat, we do not always do the right thing.  Every one of us is (or ought to be) aware that, at times, he or she upsets the delicate balance of freedom and order that governs the cosmos.

     Moreover, if this balance is to be more than relative, we must acknowledge the fact of God.  The Jews recognize this clearly.  So do Christians, and so do Muslims.  And so do adherents of countless other religions.  Absolute and therefore genuinely meaningful morality is impossible without God.  Otherwise, repentance is no more than shouting in a situational darkness, the darkness of an accidental, and therefore, as scientist Steven Weinberg observes, pointless universe.

 

    By the way, I'll be traveling for about a week and will not be posting.  Talk to you later!

    The movie "God on Trial" (based on an Eli Wiesel book, The Trial of God) depicts a conversation that a group of inmates at Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp, had about, in light of the suffering and pain they were experiencing, whether God had broken his covenant with the Jewish people.  Does he really care about them?  An unbeliever who in his former life had been a judge agreed to preside over a trial that would address this question.

    At the trial, most of the inmates are critical of God for ignoring the suffering of the Jewish people.  If we are God's chosen people, they ask, why must we suffer so much?  Moreover, as one perceptive inmate points out, it seems that God, whom he calls Adonai, is not really good; he is simply on the Jews' side.

    This is a difficult argument to refute.  Do we, Jew or not, only view God as good because he seems to help us, because he seems to be on our side?  Are we really the most important people on the planet?

    At the close of the trial, the "judge" offers a measured response.  It is faith, he argues, it is the Jew's faith in God that is all on which they can draw in the face of this mystery of suffering.  Nobody else, he says, has this resource.  Everyone else suffers, and even though the Jews do, too, they, he says, have faith in God, a faith that, despite everything else, provides, in some way, explanation.

    Quite true.  In the end, regardless of what is going with us or the world, we can either choose to believe in God or we can choose to not believe in God.  To do the former means we believe that, somehow, some way, the world has purpose, and that somehow, some way, whatever happens does, too.  Nothing more, nothing less.  But the latter means that, whatever we think life may be, it, and we, have no purpose at all.

    Which do you prefer?

      

     Many years ago I had a conversation with a young man on his way to the Burning Man Festival in the desert of Nevada.  At the time, I happened to be in South Dakota, working on an Indian reservation.  As we talked, it became clear to me that even though this young man didn’t appear to have any use for conventional religion, Christianity in particular, he had decided to journey to the Festival because he had “to find my spiritual roots.”  Although he wasn’t sure what those roots were, he was pretty much convinced that the Festival was the place to look for them.  He was persuaded that amidst the cacophony of cultural expressions he would see there, he would eventually step into a place, a place of spirit, however he defined it, he had not been before.

     

    As we talked, I thought often about the opening pages of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  The person before me seemed a mirror of the young man Joyce so insightfully describes, a person alone and apart, untrammeled and free, someone standing on the cusp of his destiny, poised to find his path forward.  Rather like, I thought, German painter Casper David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”:  poised on the edge of his calling.

    

    In the end, however, this young man told me that although he had definitely heard a call, a deeply compelling internal directive to find himself, he didn't want to learn about it in the framework of the Christian God.

    

    It was that fact of framework, he said, that held him back:  spirituality, he said, has no boundaries.

    

    Fair enough.  If an infinite God is there, then, yes, spirituality has no boundaries.  On the other hand, if an infinite God is there, it seems as if whatever spirituality we encounter will be grounded ultimately in him.  And how will we know either way?

    

    We will only know if God makes himself known in ways we understand.

    

    Ever heard of Jesus?

          It's a bit late, but I offer a prayer for Labor Day:

 "God the Maker, help us to look with love and renewed wonder at all the things that exist in part or in whole through the creativity and toil of others and ourselves. Shelter, food, clothing.  Entertainment, literature, music.  Medicine, vaccines, technology.  Personal care for those of any age.  Transport of people and goods, delivery of food and clean spaces.  Each day help us remember those who grow our food and ship it to us, who build our houses, sew our shirts, take our garbage, build our cars who feed us and bathe us.  And spur in us a hunger, O God, to honor all those who labor, to act for their just working conditions, to demand fair wages and protection, to join them in raising up a more just world.  You call us to mourn and act when the vision of Isaiah 65 is sinfully reversed, when people build houses in which they are not allowed to live; plant food, but go hungry; bathe our sores, but can't afford their water bill.  Let our gratitude for each one's service spur us to secure justice for each one's dignity." (Julie Polter)

    Amen.

   

         Creator of the novel Frankenstein (when she was but in her early twenties), Mary Shelley led a highly fascinating and somewhat tragic life.  Her father was the anarchist author William Godwin, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (and who died shortly after giving birth to Mary).  She was also married to the outspokenly atheistic poet Percy Shelley until he tragically died in the Bay of Spiza in Italy in 1822.

    Although most people believe Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein to critique the Industrial Revolution's focus on the life of the mind while overlooking the supremely important place of the heart, and she did, there might be more to the story.  More precisely, Frankenstein is a parable about the limits of humanness.  In the person of the "monster" (who turns out to be far more intelligent than the 1931 Hollywood movie makes him out to be), Shelley provides an incisive narration of the ultimate emptiness of the human condition.  She powerfully demonstrates that for all of its magnificence, humanity is finally as confused and shallow as the world over which it purports to rule.

    Dr. Frankenstein's words, in the movie, upon seeing the "monster" move its hands, exclaims, "Now I know what it feels to be God!" speaks volumes about Shelley's vision.  What would we do, really, if we were God?  Would we create the world as it is, or would we do something entirely different?  And how would we know either way?

      Can any of us bear the burden?.