This seems to be a particularly poignant couple of weeks, replete with anniversaries and remembrances. Last week, I recalled the scattering of my mother's ashes on her favorite mountain; a few days ago, the day of my spiritual birth; and today, the 29th anniversary of my father's passing.
     Dad died suddenly, quite unexpectedly, victim of a heart attack. It happened on an otherwise perfectly ordinary day. After Dad and Mom had done their usual exercise routine at the Y, Mom left for several hours. When she came home later in the afternoon, she noticed that the coffee pot was still perking on the stove. Puzzled, she began to walk through the house, looking for Dad. She found him, but not in the way she had expected. He was lying on a bed in what had been my sisters' room, dead, his body and skin cold and gone. Dad was 63.When Mom called that night to give me the news, I burst into tears.  I loved Dad so much.  He was the greatest, and I thought, as most of us would like to think of our parents, he would live forever.  I cried all night.
     But I prayed, too.  I prayed to affirm and remember the fact and reality of  God, that he was there, that he was with me, sharing my pain, suffering with me in heart, mind, and soul.  I tried to remember how much he himself had wept as he watched his son Jesus die on the cross.  I realized anew that God had known pain and privation as much as anyone possibly could.  I knew he understood my angst all too well.
     That was really all I could say.  God was there, nothing more, nothing less.  He, the transcendent presence of love and purpose, was there.  The cosmos was not empty, not devoid of thought or meaning.  God was there.
     A couple of days after I returned from the wake in California, I listened to Bach's chorale, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," thinking about, among other things, the first time I heard it.  It was the summer of 1977.  A friend of mine had presented me with a collection of piano performances by the late Dinu Lipatti, who died of cancer in 1950 at the age of 33.  "Jesu" was the first track on the record.  As its lilting strains slipped into the room, Dad exclaimed, "That's Bach!"
     As I played "Jesu" again that autumn day in 1983, I remembered Dad's words, and wept all over again.  His voice was now forever a memory.  I also wept at the power of the music.  The gentle flow of its melody carried me along like an ocean breeze, lifting me high above what I could see, taking me to the realm of what one day will be.  I dreamed of the face of God, that astonishing fusion of mind and spirit that will put to rest for all time and for all people the question of why and what really is.  There was, I realized, once again, meaningfulness even in death, hope even in hopelessness.  There is God.
          Do I miss Dad?  Of course, every day.  But I am continually convinced and persuaded that because God, the personal and purposeful God who created and loves me, is there--and always will be--I have hope.  There is heart, there is meaning; there will be another day.
     Never stop believing in the real reality of a personal God.