As we consider the fact of All Souls Day, traditionally the day after Halloween, we remember. We remember our loved ones who are gone, we remember what has gone well, we remember what has not. We remember existence, we remember life itself. We ponder the import of memory.
We also ask, how do we explain what has happened, what has been? How do we measure the span of our existence? How do we measure the value of our days?
In ourselves, though we may take pride in reflecting on a life we believe to be well lived, a life that has made its mark, how do we really know? We have only ourselves and our fellow human beings. We measure by what we know. And what we know is frightfully little. Rarely do we ever see the big picture. Rarely do we grasp the full meaning of our years. We're finite creatures living in a finite world, a world that, one day, according to all cosmological predictions, will be burned up by an expanding sun, gone forever, never to be seen again. It's over.
Take heart. We know our lives have value; we affirm it with everything we think, say, and do. Do we need anything beyond this?
Maybe, maybe not. God indeed said to Adam that, "From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return." Yet even dust only has value if it has a reason to be, that is, if someone thought of and remembered it, someone who birthed it into reality. Absent this, though dust could well be, and all of us as well, we have, absent anything in us, no reason to believe we and everything else should be. It all just happened.
Sure, things happen all the time. But why? The rhythms of the world demand it, the patterns of the cosmos enable it. Yet where did these come from?
As we remember our loved ones, as we remember what has been, as we look forward, as poet Robert Browning wrote so eloquently, to what is to come, we also remember this: if nothing, broadly speaking, was meant to be, then there is no reason for anything to be.
Enjoy the ride, delight in God: revel in the fact of personal creation.
We also ask, how do we explain what has happened, what has been? How do we measure the span of our existence? How do we measure the value of our days?
In ourselves, though we may take pride in reflecting on a life we believe to be well lived, a life that has made its mark, how do we really know? We have only ourselves and our fellow human beings. We measure by what we know. And what we know is frightfully little. Rarely do we ever see the big picture. Rarely do we grasp the full meaning of our years. We're finite creatures living in a finite world, a world that, one day, according to all cosmological predictions, will be burned up by an expanding sun, gone forever, never to be seen again. It's over.
Take heart. We know our lives have value; we affirm it with everything we think, say, and do. Do we need anything beyond this?
Maybe, maybe not. God indeed said to Adam that, "From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return." Yet even dust only has value if it has a reason to be, that is, if someone thought of and remembered it, someone who birthed it into reality. Absent this, though dust could well be, and all of us as well, we have, absent anything in us, no reason to believe we and everything else should be. It all just happened.
Sure, things happen all the time. But why? The rhythms of the world demand it, the patterns of the cosmos enable it. Yet where did these come from?
As we remember our loved ones, as we remember what has been, as we look forward, as poet Robert Browning wrote so eloquently, to what is to come, we also remember this: if nothing, broadly speaking, was meant to be, then there is no reason for anything to be.
Enjoy the ride, delight in God: revel in the fact of personal creation.
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