Earlier this week, our Jewish friends celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It's a joyous time, for it remembers the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and God's call to them (and, by extension, us) to live and steward the earth.  Yet it is also a somber time, the day that begins the ten days of repentance that culminate on Yom Kippur, the great day of atonement.
     On the other hand, it is this dichotomy, this interplay of choice and responsibility, that frames the meaning and point of existence.  We are born into an extraordinary world, a world whose wonder often exceeds our imagination.  Yet unless humans master interplanetary travel, it will remain our only world.  And we must care for it, not just for ourselves, but for all those who follow us or, as many a Native American tribe put it, "for the seventh generation to come."
     Because humans are the creatures most fully endowed with choice making capacity, however, it is humans who, in turn, possess the greatest capacity for abusing themselves, this world, and God.  It is humans who are most able to destroy what God has created. Rosh Hashanah underscores that we walk a fragile path between glory and cognizance that this glory is not  our own.  We only have it because we are here, and we are only here because we could not be anywhere else.
     The New Year is God's, but its meaning is us.