The other day I heard a song I had not heard in some time, the Stone Ponies'
"Different Drummer," featuring lead singer Linda Ronstadt.  As you may know, the Stone Ponies split soon after they recorded this song, some of them going on to form the Eagles; others, including Linda Ronstadt, moving into highly successful solo careers.  As the Seventies looped their way across the West, the Eagles sold millions of albums, and Linda Ronstadt achieved international fame with her music as well as her highly alluring figure and persona that made her, in the view of many people, the "sexiest woman" in rock and roll.
     That was over forty years ago.  Today, things are very different.  Although the Eagles continue to make music and tour, reaping ever larger financial rewards, Linda Ronstadt sits in her house in Los Angeles, no longer shapely, and largely alone, unable to make much money at all.  A number of years ago, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. For her Parkinson's has been particularly cruel:  it robbed her of the ability to sing.  As she put it in a recent interview, "I'll never sing again."  No longer will her powerful voice rock the airwaves, no longer will she fill vast arenas with her remarkable musical talent.  It's tragic.
     As I reflected on the song and where Linda is today, I thought, once more, of life's unpredictability and caprice.  Who could have imagined, at the height of her fame, that forty years later Linda would be an operatic cripple, forever robbed of the very thing that made her such a presence on the musical scene?  As Ecclesiastes observes, "Who can know what will come after her?"  Who can know what will happen next?
     No one, absolutely no one.  We weep over life's seeming randomness, and well we should:  we live in the nexus of forces we only rarely fathom or measure.  We struggle with circumstance, we wrestle with mortality.  We strive against things we will never defeat or overcome.  We live as human beings, and we die as human beings.
     So is God really there?  That's up to you.  Everyone must decide this:  are we here because we are here or are we here because we are in a "here"?