Many centuries ago, Anselm, the Catholic prelate who served as the archbishop of Canterbury in eleventh century England, remarked that, "He who has not experienced will not understand."  Anselm was referring to the process of spiritual discernment, that in terms of spiritual matters, often we will not understand them until we either experience them, believe in them, or both.  This explains, in part, why the religious among us may meet with looks of, depending on to whom they are talking, bemusement, annoyance, befuddlement, or outright anger when they present matters of faith.  Those who have not found what the religious have found frequently have no categories for grasping what they are saying.  To them, it's nonsense.  In addition, too often those of faith will tell those who are not that the reason they cannot understand matters of faith is that, "You have to believe," or "You just don't understand."
     To a point, this is true.  If one does not believe in a religious doctrine, that doctrine may indeed appear to be lunacy.  Or if one has not "experienced" a religion, talk of such experience will seem silly, even crazy.  This leads to two possibilities.  One, there are certain religious experiences which people will not understand unless they, too, believe in the possibility and factuality of such experiences.  Two, those who experience such things are simply deluded by what is no more than a psychological phenomenon.  There is no real religious "experience" to be had.  It's difficult to find a middle ground:  either one "sees," or one does not.
     Herein lies the final challenge--and paradox--of faith.  To believe, one needs faith.  But to have faith, one needs to believe faith is viable.  And to believe faith is viable is to acknowledge that there is something, something as real as the sunshine, to which that faith points.  Yet to do this is to have faith as well.  Either way, faith is difficult.
     Unfortunately, however, faith is the only way to really experience--and believe.

     In his classic novel Descent into Hell, the British writer Charles Williams (a contemporary of C. S. Lewis and Lord of the Rings creator J. R. R. Tolkien), observes that, "But if the past still lives in its own present beside our present, then the momentary later inhabitants [of the world] were surrounded by a later universe."
     It's an intriguing thought.  Although the past is no longer happening physically, it is still here, living still, embedded in our memory, very much alive and present, but oddly, no longer present or palpably with us.  We walk in a funny tangle of past, present past, and past past, an undulating and often aphonic web of experiences on which we are constantly building, but which we no longer see, experiences that shape but experiences which no longer exist.  Yet they remain.
     Given Williams's commitment to the existence of the spiritual world, we might view this remark as a conclusion about what is known and what is not.  While we may, through various texts and experiences, "know" (or at least think we do) about the spiritual world, we usually do not see it.  But if it is there, it is living in its "own present" besides our own, a present with a past and present of its own, a present that surrounds and penetrates all other presents as a kind of permanently living past and present, a present that explains all others.  Into it all the pasts goes, and into it all the pasts finds meaning.
     And, the story continues, we all are (or one day will be) surrounded by a "later" universe.  In the end, a forever present will reign.

     Older than the flood?  A tablet recently announced by its finder, Irving Finkel of the British Museum, and which is alleged to predate the writings of ancient Babylon as well as the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) has stirred enormous interest among archaeologists and scholars who study such things.  Why?  It contains, as translated, an account of a flood, along with specific instructions on building an ark to survive in it.  Hence, what we seem to have is a flood account which was written before every other one, even the most famous of all, the one in the Hebrew Bible (remember Noah and his three sons, as the story is presented in Genesis 6 - 9?).
     That we have a flood account that predates the story of Noah is nothing new.  Some fragments of The Epic of Gilgamesh, a fascinating tale of adventure and ruminations on mortality which also contains an account of a flood, date from the close of the third millennium B.C., well before Abraham even entered Canaan, and several centuries before the Hebrews began to compose their scriptures.  Moreover, it's no secret that many cultures around the globe have stories of a great flood buried in their respective legends and mythologies.
     So what can we learn from this discovery?  Regardless of how we might feel about the intentionality, historicity, or accuracy of a flood, global or localized, we can nonetheless conclude that the Hebrew account, one among many, is indeed very much a work of its time.  It reflects life in the second millennium B.C. and not that of the first century A.D.  It concords with the culture it describes.  It's consistent with its genre, it's true to its form.  It's religious, yes, but it's religion in history.  And in point of fact, unless religion comes out of history, it's no religion at all.
     God tends to speak to us as we are, beings in space and time and, in particular, he tends to speak to those who are looking for him most, in history, in space, and in time.  He is a God for us.

     Maybe we really do spin our wheels more than we think.  Snowshoeing through a forest the other day, I chanced upon a rather large and sturdy looking nest about twenty feet off the ground, clinging to a set of branches.  Marvelous, I thought, just marvelous.  This nest was not made with concrete or metal, not held together with synthetic glue.  It was assembled using purely natural materials, the detritus of the forest, the products of the world out of which it came.  It was not built according to a blueprint, it was not designed in the proverbial smoke-filled room.  Many springs ago, a bird, perhaps a couple of birds built this nest.  They likely didn't think much about it; they sensed a need and immediately set about to meet it.  And they didn't build this nest to collapse or break down.  They built it for the ages.
     Do we build for the ages?  Year after year, teams of scientists research to identify the longest lasting material, the strongest substance, the sturdiest protection for our goods and possessions.  They never stop, either.  People are constantly looking for the next best thing, the next best thing that will satisfy their desires for shelter and protection.  What is good this year may not be good the next.
     Not so for the birds.  Year after year, they are satisfied with what they've always done, with what they've always used.  They need nothing more.  The present is enough.  Perhaps this is why Jesus remarked about the birds that, "Even Solomon [one of the great kings of Israel] in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these [meaning birds]."
     Sometimes what is already here or what has always been rather than what will come next is the best thing.  Past, present, and future, it's all here. Although God dearly wants us to dream and live out, in space and time, the life he has given us, he also wants us to understand that, every night and every day, what is most important is that he has always been.  For it is from God's eternality that everything else comes, today, tomorrow, and all days to come.  In it we start, and in it we end.
     As the Greek philosopher Parmenides remarked, "What is, is.  What is not, is not."  Indeed.  What is there is never what's not.

     Today, for those of us who follow such things, is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  To this day, people the world over continue to be astonished by the immense creativity and wonder of this Austrian's music.  Fluent in all genres of classical music, Mozart, though he, sadly, died at the tender age of 34, produced an array of musical expressions that most musicologists agree is unmatched.  As a contemporary said of him, "He was like an angel sent to us for a season, only to return to heaven again."  Most of us can only stand mute and marvel at Mozart's immense ability.  How could one person write works of such extraordinary beauty?
     Let's consider a verse from the first chapter of Genesis.  "And God created man [man and woman] in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created him" (Genesis 1:26).  The God who created the universe with all its immense complexity and wonder is the same God who created, with equal wonder, every human being.  For this reason, every person who has ever been born and walked through the history of this planet has the potential to duplicate and express, albeit in finite (yet often, in the case of Mozart, remarkable) form, the creativity that birthed the cosmos.
     Rightly do we crater and weep at the beauty of Mozart's compositions; they are works of unsurpassed wonder.  Yet rightly do we marvel equally at God, the personal infinite God who made and fashioned this artist--with all his prodigious talents--and enabled him to be and become who and what he is.
      In truth, where else could have creativity come from?
     

     I read recently that as of January 15, the winter snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California is only twenty percent of its normal amount.  It's a shocking statistic, really, that a mountain range whose copious snows in past times have trapped and intimidated countless people (for example, the Donner Party) is now reduced to a semblance of its once mighty self.  Even a mountain range is not invulnerable to the vagaries of natural circumstance.
     In my first summer in the Sierra (still after all these years my favorite mountain range), many decades ago, I was astonished at the amount of water that filled its lakes, tumbled down its waterfalls, and flowed through its streams.  It seemed endless.  Week after week, month after month, it remained as strong as it was when I began.  Its abundance seemed without end.
     Although next year's snowpack could be much heavier, this year's paucity should remind us that abundance is a fleeting thing.  Life overflows with abundance, yet it can also produce profound privation.  If we root ourselves in what life has to offer us and only what life has to offer us, we may eventually find that it is an insufficient tether for our needs and longings.  Not that life is not wonderful, for it is, but that life is only as powerful as it is and no more.  It's not inexhaustible.
     The good news, however, is that its author is not.

     We are such little people.  Watching the birds at our feeder the other day, I marveled at how those little creatures are able to keep warm in temperatures that drive most of us inside for months.  Seemingly indifferent to the wind and falling snow, they flit about the feeder, packing seed after seed into their tiny stomachs.  Below them, scurrying about the ground, the squirrels ply their trade, burrowing into the snow, looking for any crumb or morsel they can find.  Sometimes they eat it on the spot; other times they grab it in their teeth and ramble away to their drays above the forest.
      Or when I see the Canada geese winging their way across the land, happily strutting through the snow, poking their beaks at the cold, I realize anew why the very best sleeping bags are filled with goose down.  What the geese probably don't think about we study intensively, seeking ways to use it to exercise and participate in our longings for things wild.  We who are supposedly the most intelligent animals must in the end use those who are supposedly not as smart as we to go places where we do not normally go, to step outside our everyday to find adventure.  We are dependent upon creatures much small than we, creatures who are not independently aware of their existence.
     How ironic that the most mighty must learn from the littlest among them.  It's the beauty of a world not made by those living in it, a world that whether one believes it was created by God or not, is a world that were we to design it, we would likely never do so in quite this way.
     We are little people of great creativity yet finite imagination.  Happily, we are not alone.

     Although I do not watch sports regularly, it has been difficult to miss the ubiquity of America's NFL playoffs in recent weeks.  Every Sunday afternoon since the middle of December, millions of people in the U.S., and the rest of the world, have spent untold hours before a television set, watching the play and anticipating the outcome:  the two teams that will play in the Super Bowl.
     Ah, the Super Bowl.  Now that the two teams have been decided, we wait for the day when they meet.  One marvels at the time, money, and energy that are poured into making this day an extravaganza of nearly unrivaled proportions.  It's the mother of all productions.
     Yet for varying reasons, billions of people around the world love it.  I often wonder what our many animal friends think about the sight of that many people glued to their television sets for over four hours, eating, talking, laughing.  Whatever are those human beings doing?
     Simply being, I guess, human beings, magnificent, glorious, frail, intelligent, self-conscious and incomplete sentient beings availing themselves of the only existence they will ever have on this planet.
     Therein lies the puzzle:  where else will we find such an intriguing combination of will, tenuousness, folly, and determination?  Is this God's intention or is this evolution's result?  Either way, it's nothing anyone could have predicted:  life's essence eludes us unless we can see beyond it.
    

     Eternity.  For some, eternity is a myth; for others, a dream; for others, a very present longing; for others, an indefinable hope; for others, visible reality.  Incomprehensible (who can conceive of a state which has no beginning nor end), mortally unattainable (can anyone ever hope to live without being born?), and yet dragging itself through most of our imaginations, eternity burdens us.  It stirs us, it cajoles us, it beguiles us, it soothes us.  It also offends us, promising a life that is, by any credible reason, temporally impossible to obtain.
     Maybe that's the point.  Real or not, eternity speaks to us because it tells of realities beyond our ken, yet realities whose presence most of us wish would be so.  Who would not want to know that this life is not all there is?  Who would not want to know that this world will not always be its broken (yet glorious) self?  Or that it had a future beyond comprehension?
     If eternity were merely an extension of mortality, it would not be nearly as attractive.  Who  would want to gradually atrophy for centuries (although the elves in Lord of the Rings movies looked rather good for being 3,000 years old!)?  Eternity is only wonderful if it is something completely unlike anything we know now.
     And this is the burden.  Eternity is qualitatively different.  As one writer put it, it is the "life after life after death."  Eternity is alone and apart.  Yet it is the beginning and end of all things.  Oddly (and perhaps frustratingly), however, we will not find eternity unless we believe in it, and we must believe in it without seeing it.
     To borrow a phrase from the timeless Star Trek series (television and movie), eternity:  the final frontier.
    

     "Freedom," the Who sang many years ago, "tastes of reality."  As many of you may know, tomorrow, the U.S. remembers the birthday of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.  Central to the day is the belief that freedom, the ability to do what one chooses, when one chooses to do it is surely one of humanity's greatest blessings.  Those who have it treasure it immensely; those who do not, long for it deeply.
     Is freedom reality?  If being free is the ability to find oneself as oneself is in this world, then freedom is indeed reality.  It offers people opportunity to find what is most real and true about them, their lives, and the world in which they live them.  It is a path to ultimate discovery.
     Maybe that's why, as John records it in chapter eight of his gospel, Jesus told his audience that, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  Freedom is only meaningful if it is grounded in something bigger than itself.  It's only real if it is centered in truth  Freedom is discovery because it recognizes that unless there is truth, being free is no more than the authenticating acts of existentialism:  here today, gone tomorrow, never a point to be made.
     As we remember King's birthday, we also remember that the freedom he preached is ultimately, as Gandhi observed in his notion of satyagraha, self-discovery in the truth.  We do not discover in an accidental universe without definition; we discover truth in a universe made real by truth itself.

     The death penalty?  The recent execution by lethal injection of a convicted killer in Ohio has stirred no small amount of controversy.  All witness accounts indicate that the person executed, 53 year old Dennis McGuire, took nearly fifteen minutes to die, time filled, according to most witnesses, by McGuire choking, snorting, and gasping until he finally expired and was declared dead.  Predictably, death penalty proponents stated that because McGuire was given a sedative initially, such sounds did not indicate extreme pain or suffering, whereas death penalty opponents noted that even the sedative did not seem to prevent McGuire from experiencing what appeared to be intense pain.
     Either way, the outcome was the same:  McGuire is now dead.  As I read the debate between advocates and opponents of the death penalty, I kept wondering how those involved really viewed the now deceased person.  Did they believe he had been created in the image of God, a person therefore as worthwhile as they?  Did they believe in the adage, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"?  Did they believe in the state's supremacy?  Does anyone believe justice, earthly, divine, and otherwise, has really been done?
     So who's right?  Who has the truest word?  No one, really.  We tread on very thin ice when we assert that we and we alone speak for the word of God.  And justice, we should realize, is far bigger than anyone here can possibly think.
     As the prophet Isaiah records God saying, "My ways are not yours."  Indeed.  Death is a very complex thing.  Whether we take it or give it, we ought not to trivialize it.

     What is the value of a life?  You may have heard about the case currently playing out in Texas, a case that pits a family's desire to honor its loved one's final wishes and a state concerned to preserve a life. 
     The facts of the case are as follows.  A woman is struck by a lung condition, fades quickly, and is put on life support.  Prior to this incident, she had made clear to her family that she did not wish to be sustained on life support, that she would rather accept the death that awaited her.  Complicating her situation, however, is that she is pregnant.  Although her doctors and her hospital have indicated that they would like to honor this woman's directives and wishes and terminate her life support, the state of Texas, employing a law that has been on the books for some time, insist that to do so is illegal.   If a woman is pregnant, this law stipulates, the state must do what it can to bring the baby to viability.
     So the question becomes this:  do we honor the woman's wishes or do what we can to preserve the fetus (potential baby)?  Should this state law be allowed to override a free agent's wishes, or should this free agent's wishes be honored?  At stake, of course, is the life of the fetus.  Should it be kept alive (and, by extension, the woman) until it is viable outside the womb?  Experience indicates that babies born significantly prematurely almost always have multiple health issues and difficulties, resulting in lengthy and expensive care, care that unless its parents have solid insurance, could well be footed by the taxpayers.  On the other hand, a life is a life, each one as sacred as the next.  Who are we to decide one life's worth?  Our justification is no more than our own.
    Underlying this debate is therefore a larger issue, that is, how do we decide what is right and wrong?  How do we decide what is true?  Do we use social and political consensus?  Do we use religion?  Do we use ourselves?  How we answer this question will determine what we will do.  Complicating the equation is that whether it be the result of cultural forces, historical circumstance, or personal whim, we, society, and religion all change, sometimes constantly.
     So, some might say, we look to God.  But definitions of God differ, often rather dramatically.  Moreover, as anyone who has been in this type of end of life situation knows, there are frequently no good choices to make.  If we believe God is there, we pray.  We pray for wisdom, we pray for discernment.  We pray for meaning, we pray for purpose, we pray for a point.  And we make our choice.
     May God help this family, may he help the state.  May love and meaningfulness prevail.

     Do you think, as do many adherents of the so-called New Age, that one day all religions will be one?  When I was asked this question recently, I had to consider several things.  One, clearly, few religions agree with each other.  Two, some religions that disagree with each other do so in often very violent ways.  Three, religion is often as much a product of culture as imagination.  Four, faith is a multi-faceted phenomenon whose contours are broad and exceedingly complex.
     On the other hand, most, if not all religions agree on this:  buried in the human psyche and experience is a sense of otherness and mystery, a sense that there is something besides us, something that although it may not be visible physically, is nonetheless apprehensible in mind, heart, and imagination, something which in some way gives life a fuller meaning.  Unfortunately, religions differ on precisely what this something is.
     So should we therefore suppose that in no way will all religions ever be one?  Religions will only be one when every human being agrees on who she is and why she is here, an outcome which is not likely to occur any time soon.  To wit, it is not so much that all religions may well become one, but that that which is oneness itself will be clearly manifested to all of us as the meaning of all that is.
     For this, some still wait; for some, it has already come.  Either way, it seems that whatever it is, it is already "here."  We need only believe we can see it.
    

    

     The other day someone asked me a difficult question.  If, as Christianity says, God does all things to bring glory to himself, does that not make God selfish?
     Hmmm.  There are no easy answers.  We will always wonder and struggle with what we seek to define as the purposes of God.  My wife recently told me about a childhood friend of hers who recently revealed to her that her father, a deacon in the church, had sexually abused her throughout her childhood.  This is tragic.  Sure, it's a bent world, and sure, evil things happen, but why to this particular woman and not others?  And why at the hands of one who purports to be a lover of God?  Does this bring God glory?
     It's hard to see how.  Yet I'm not sure that God's apparent capriciousness (in this instance) is a case of him being selfish and allowing or doing whatever he wants for his "glory," but rather that it is a picture of God doing his best to bring together and resolve, in this life, the realities of sin and human choice and divine sovereignty and control.  God certainly knows our pain, and is acutely aware that this world is full of it.  He also knows that Jesus has met the pain and conquered the sin that ultimately spawns it.  Yet God also realizes (and I tread carefully in divining the mind of God) that we are still trapped in this existence without no way out, physically, other than death.
     That said, it's too easy to say that God has a plan, and it's too easy to say that what he knows overrides our ability to understand it--even if this is true.  On the other hand, we err if we try to embrace reality without admitting to mystery and questioning God; besides, I'm not sure that he wants us to not question him, anyway.  We are victims of our finitude.  We will always wonder.  Did not Jesus weep over the pain of Lazarus' survivors (see John 11)?  In the end, we go on in the darkness, trusting in, as difficult as it may be, in God's ultimate love for us.
     God's glory is that somehow, some way there is meaning.

     I just finished reading a book called Death on the Barrens, a harrowing--and true--tale of challenge, survival, and redemption on an 1955 canoe expedition through the Canadian Barrens, one of the least traveled wilderness areas on the planet.  It is the story of an ambitious canoe expedition gone wrong and how those who survived (the leader died) made their way back to civilization.  Much has been written about the mistakes the canoeists made and how the expedition may have been doomed from the start, but my intent here is to not dwell on those but on the journey of heart the author, George James Grinnell, makes as he finds his way back to inner normalcy.
     His quest was not an easy one.  Along the way, he married four times, lost all three of his sons in a canoeing accident, and found income but not always fulfillment in teaching at a Canadian university.  Today, Mr. Grinnell is eighty years old and, as he tells it, his mind still wanders back to the days of the expedition when "love bathed his soul in the waters of inner peace."  For him, the expedition, despite nearly killing him, is the high point of his life.  He will never experience a time like it again.  It is what brain researchers call a "flashbulb" memory, one of those memories that enlarge and illuminate life in unforgettable ways.
     We all need those flashbulb memories, really, those moments of reality that mark and mold us in ways that other moments do not, those slices of experience that leave us profoundly and, we hope, forever changed.  Like George Grinnell, we often endure much to find them, but we rarely regret them in the end.  They change our lives.
     What is your flashbulb memory?  Ponder it, treasure it, be in awe over it; rejoice in life's ability to deliver such profundity in a broken existence.  Marvel that in the midst of a seemingly cold and indifferent universe life shines and love reigns.
     God is there.

     Before I write about my recently concluded mountain expedition in the West, I would like to draw attention to the work of two prelates who live in the Central African Republic.  They are Archbishop Dieudonne Nzapalainga and Imam Oumar Kobine Layama.  Nzapalainga is a Christian, Layama a Muslim.  Although Christianity and Islam agree on some issues of faith and God (or, for a Muslim, Allah ("Al"), which is simply the Arabic name for God, just as "El" is the Hebrew name for God), they differ rather pointedly on the person of Jesus Christ.  For the Muslim, Jesus is a great prophet who will one day return to inaugurate a new kingdom in the world.  But he is not God.  Christians, on the other hand, believe Jesus to be God, birthed on earth as a flesh and blood human being.  As Jesus' person and work is the cornerstone of Christianity, it is not likely that Christians and Muslims will agree on who he is anytime soon.
     However, this does not mean that people from both faiths cannot come together in common cause on specific issues.  This is what the Archbishop and the Imam are doing in the Central African Republic.  Amidst the immense carnage and turmoil that is rocking this pitiable and forgotten (at least by the West) nation, these two clergy are investing much time and energy in encouraging and nurturing a spirit of tolerance and reconciliation among its people.  They are putting aside their theological differences to promote a meaningful peace and comity among the country's religiously diverse population.  Believing that Christianity as well as Islam advocate care and concern for one's neighbor, Nzapalainga and Layama are working hard to get their fellow citizens to see that love for one's neighbor overrides parochial concerns, that in the end how we love is more important, practically, than how we believe.  There will always be time for theological debate; for now, however, the health and welfare of the nation are prime, and these clerics are therefore telling their neighbors to look beyond themselves and love each other for the common good of all.
     We indeed applaud them for their efforts.  We cannot live together if we do not love together.