Late last week, one of rock's guitar greats, Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, passed away at the age of 68.  As one who watched Alvin perform in his heyday, the glory days of rock, the late Sixties and early Seventies, I was saddened greatly, saddened that we would no longer hear Alvin play.  He was a marvel.  But now he's gone.
     In their album Cricklewood Green, Ten Years After did a song called "Circles."  It's a tale of life's circularity and fleetingness, of the pleasure of success, the joy of accomplishment, yet the corresponding emptiness of it all:  we're all going to die, anyway.
     Yes, we are all going to die, for that is part of being human.  And yes, while we are here, we will, we hope, find pleasure, experience joy, enjoy success.  Morbid as it sounds, however, Alvin's right:  in the end, it really means nothing, nothing really at all.
     But if life is a series of circles, why does it have beginnings?  Why does it have ends?  Beginnings cannot start on their own, and ends cannot come without beginnings.  And neither can be unless the circles of existence themselves begin.  Yet how can the circles begin--and end--unless something without beginning starts them and spins them, shaping them, turning them with purpose, hope, and meaning?
     Farewell, Alvin.  May we all come to see that our circles do not need to end, that beginning and end are present as well as presence, that beyond and below it all is a love, a passionate and eternal divine love that holds us all, here, there, today, tomorrow, forever.  All we need do is open our eyes.