Perhaps you've heard of the Sixties rock group called the Monkees.  Many rock critics castigate the Monkees, primarily because they were a band that did not develop organically but rather through the agency of various record producers who wanted to "create" a band.  For many, the Monkees were an "artificial" band.
     Be this as it may, some of the Monkees' songs have proven rather memorable.  For example, the movie "Shrek" used their song "I'm a Believer" to wide effect.  I am thinking, however, of a different song, one called "Daydream Believer."  Sung by Davey Jones, whom the girls who followed the band widely regarded as the cutest of the foursome, it is a poignant dance of love and life and the thought that money does not enhance either one.
     A few years ago, Davey Jones, on tour, as he had been for decades, traveling the world, continuing to draw audiences to hear the songs he did for the Monkees, unexpectedly, very unexpectedly, died, felled by a heart attack.  He was 67.  As I thought about his death then, and as I reflect on it today (having heard "Daydream Believer" recently), I return to the profound mystery of existence.  How we love being alive, and yet how we wonder what it means, particularly when we encounter such abrupt ends.  We search for some sort of purpose to such fleetingness.  We may well find it in living, but this only lasts as long as we live, our bewilderment still unresolved.
     I'm  thankful that such marvel and wonder, the marvel and wonder which all of us are, is not without a point, is not without a reason, is not absent of a reason beyond itself (for a reason in itself only serves to set us into an endless circle of groundless point). Ironically, life is life, and all that it implies, precisely because it is more than itself.  It is the work of God.
     Rest well, Davey.