"Morning has broken," so the ancient Gaelic hymn goes, and, it continues, all that is created emerges, shining, rejoicing and, as the stanza draws to a close, it notes that it is all springing "fresh from the Word."
     Old words, yes, but unalterably seminal and true.  The "Word" to which the song refers is the Word of God which, the first chapter of Genesis tells us, spoke the cosmos into existence, a deed enshrined in words with which many of us are aware, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."  There it is:  speech.   Speech created the world, speech shaped and molded the world; speech made us who we are.
     And it did so, as the medieval Christian mystic Thomas a Kempis notes in his Meditations, with Prayers, on the Life and Loving-Kindness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, "without any labor."
     Moreover, if speech connotes meaning, that is, because speech indicates the fact of a conscious and meaningful presence of being, we can say that if speech created the world, meaning is woven into every corner of the cosmos.  Whatever else we may conclude about ourselves or our existence, we may therefore take heart that, over and above all else, we, as beings of this cosmos, are meaningful.
     And so is the universe.

     Does God answer prayer?  Ah, such a loaded question.  In her novel No Graven Image, well known missionary Elisabeth Elliot, who died last year, deals with it poignantly.  She tells the story of a missionary in the field tending to the medical needs of the severely underresourced population among whom she worked.  To help one sick person, she gives him penicillin, and prays.  All too soon, however, this person dies of anaphylactic shock while the missionary stands by helplessly.
     The obvious question comes immediately to mind:  why did God not heal?  Did not Jesus heal?  Did not Jesus promise that, "whatever you ask for in my name I will do?"
     To both questions, we must answer yes.  Yet we must consider three other things as well.  One, as I mentioned a few days ago, God is not a slot machine.  Two, to view God as purveyor of goodness quite apart from the patterns of the world he made is to miss the point of humanness.  God blesses, yes, but God blesses in a broken world.  Three, to make blessings the whole point of belief is to, in fact, deny it.  It is to forget that belief is at its core a relationship, a relationship of trust.  We trust God, God trusts us.  Both of us are working in a bent world.  Neither of us changes what is there; we express who we are in it.
     And we believe.  We believe in the world, we believe in God.  We believe that we can trust, we trust that we can believe.  We trust that God is exactly who he, in Jesus, claimed to be:  a love that surpasses knowledge, a love ever present, yet a love that, for now, is not fully knowable.
     It is a love, however, worth knowing.  It is a love that is eternal.

     Today is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Around the world, people 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 expression 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 (and often, in the case of Mozart, remarkable) form, the creativity that birthed the cosmos.
     Here is a link to part of one of Mozart's most loved operas, The Magic Flute.  It's the song of Papageno.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMz9PNZfYwk


     Yes, Papageno.  Rightly do we weep and swoon 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.
      As he does for all of us, we who are gifted beyond measure, we who are made to create in unabashed wonder.
     Enjoy and appreciate the people--all people--whom God has made.
     Thank you, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

     At one point in my recent backpacking expedition, I came upon a shrine dedicated to the Hawaiian goddess Pele.  I was near the rim of a caldera, the remnant of a volcano that exploded thousands of years ago, a volcano which native Hawaiians believe to be the home of Pele.  By leaving offerings to Pele, some natives hope to appease her, Pele, the goddess of fire and smoke, and receive her blessings.  They ask Pele to rain her goodness upon them.
     Perhaps Pele will.  Even if God has appeared in history, as Christianity and Hinduism affirm he has, and even if one prays to God for help and blessing, however, when good things come, how do we know it is from him?
     The short answer is that, we don't.  Though we believe they are, and though we have various historical attestations of God doing such things, we cannot demonstrate the visible presence of God's hand in any blessing we receive.
     So what's the purpose of religion, anyway?  Certainly not to serve as a human slot machine.  Even though Hawaiians petition Pele for grace, and Christians, Jews, and Muslims pray to God/the Name/Allah for guidance and assistance, religion at its best is quite simple:  the acknowledgement of dependency and wonder.  It is humanity's way of reminding itself that despite its marvel, humankind is, in the end, foolish for denying that it is here for any reason other than what it can suppose on its own.
     Pele, God, the Name, Allah, Krishna, or someone else altogether, religion speaks of what we cannot, but what we so desperately need:  a reason to be other than to merely be.

     Is this the best of all possible worlds?  So asked Candide in French Enlightenment figure Voltaire's book of the same name.  Beaten, kidnapped, shipwrecked, stabbed in the stomach, and more, Candide asked this question constantly.  In one of Voltaire's most biting satires of the prevailing Christian perspective of his day, Candide questioned why, in light of his misadventures, the Church continued to insist that God could not have made a better world.
     It's not a question one answers easily.  If we look at it against Percy Walker's novel Love in the Ruins, however, we might be able to frame it in a different light.  Love in the Ruins tells the story of Thomas More, an erstwhile doctor turned patient turned doctor again who, as the world he knows appears to be falling apart, hooks himself up with multiple women and what he hopes will be the professional success of a lapsometer, an instrument which he contends measures the human soul.  Like Candide who, as his tale draws to a close, finds himself in his garden, peaceful and content, the doctor, as his story ends, as a bloody uprising of the underclass decimates the insular paradise of the affluent, More finds himself settling comfortably into bed, wrapped in the warmth of the woman he loves most.  Here I am, he says, "at home in bed where all good folk belong."
     Garden or bed, both protagonists finish their journeys away and apart from the world that has caused them so much grief.  So it seems that, regardless of how their lives in the world have been, what matters for Candide and More most is that they have the fullness of personal peace.
     Would it be better if these men had not endured the pain to find their peace?  I suppose.  Would it be more pleasing if Christianity didn't insist that despite its flaws, this world is indeed the best of all possible worlds--because God made it?  Again, I suppose. We can, I suppose, conclude that, in a crazy and unpredictable world, better that we seek peace now than peace with a God we cannot see, a God whose creation seems to undermine us at every turn.
     I suppose.  But this still leaves us with the unanswerable question:  why is life how it is?  God confuses, yes, yet we confuse ourselves, too.  And we know frightfully little.
     Which confusion do you choose?
     

     As I continue meditate on the winter that swarms around me, I like to think about the Arctic tern.  The Arctic tern is a remarkable bird.  It summers in the Arctic, its striking black head poking up from the deep green grasses and tundra, making its nest and raising its young, preparing its offspring for the next stage of their lives.
     Come August, however, the Arctic tern leaves the Arctic.  Where does it go?  All the way to Antarctica.  All the way to the other end of the globe.  Every August, this relatively small bird flies 12,000 long, long miles south, braving cold, wind, and all manner of predator to summer in the foothills of Antarctica.  It's an amazing journey, a stunning feat of determination and endurance.
     Then, as Antarctica's winter looms, the Arctic tern flies all the way back to the Arctic. It navigates those 12,000 miles all over again.  One wonders what drives it; one marvels at its single-mindedness.  Sure, we can attribute it to instinct, to an urge it cannot dismiss, and that would be true.  Perhaps the more cynical of us might suggest that its lengthy migration tells us that God does not know what he is doing.  Why would he have this tiny bird journey all these miles, year after year after year?
     Maybe God could have done it differently.  Maybe, however, the Arctic tern's incredible peregrinations tell us not about the ineptness of God but about the astonishment of the planet, the awesome way that its systems fit so neatly together. Maybe the Arctic tern's travels tell us that whether or not we believe in God, we cannot help but wonder at the wonder of this world, a world we did not make, yet a world which we believe is made for us.
     And why?

     Oh, the cold, cold of brumality, the cold of deepest winter.  It is gripping the Midwest at the moment, gripping it firmly, gripping it tenaciously.  It is not likely to let go anytime soon.
     Left over from our autumn decorations are several corn cobs.  Yesterday I set out a few for the squirrels who, despite frigid temperatures, continue to venture out in search of, I presume, food and adventure (though more likely the former!).  Not many minutes passed until one cob was gone, its captor scampering out of the yard, on its way to its, as a children's book I read to my kids puts it, "leafy dray."  Soon, I noticed another squirrel munching away at a second ear, its razor sharp teeth (the same teeth that seem able to bite through even the steel housing of a bird feeder) making short work of the frozen kernels.
     Were I in a wilderness area, in no way would I feed the animals.  I would let them be themselves, being who they have been for centuries and centuries more.  Most of them survive.  Out of the mountains, however, I see it differently.  Although I suspect most of the birds and squirrels would survive whether or not I set out for food for them, I like being able to supplement their meager winter diets.  I enjoy seeing them roam and flit about our yard.
     Centuries ago, St. Francis, patron saint of many lovers of the outdoors, foundation of a day Episcopalians set as aside as The Blessing of the Animals, and the name from which the current Catholic pope drew his, famously tended to the animals whom he encountered.  He delighted in feeding whom he considered to be fellow creatures of God.
     As can we.  Far away from the pristine landscapes of the American wilderness yet very much ensconced in the love and affections of God, we rejoice that we can use our bounty to feed and nurture the earth.
     We may be human, but we are animals, too.  As God sees it, we must share the earth.

     "Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who didst create the heavens by thy command, and all their host by thy mere word.  Thou hast subjected them to fixed laws and time, so that they might not deviate from their set function.  They are glad and happy to do the will of their Creator, the true Author, whose achievement is truth . . . blessed art thou, O Lord, who renewest the months."

     So says a portion of the revered Jewish Amidah, a beautiful collection of eighteen benedictions that anchor the Jewish liturgy.  Whether or not you believe in God, and whether or not you believe that God acts in human lives, I hope that you find some weight, some measure of meaning, perhaps an avenue of meditation or reflection, in this prayer.  God or not, we marvel at the order of the cosmos.  We are grateful for the rhythms of the seasons.  And we long for truth.
     God or not, we cannot live and function without the immensely fine tuned structure of the universe, cannot make any cogent plans apart from the certainty of seasonal change.  We rejoice that we can find meaning, we delight that we can find truth.
     Perhaps, perhaps if you are on the other side of faith, perhaps if you do not believe in God, perhaps you can at least believe in a meaningful universe, an intelligible cosmos.  If so, then perhaps you might be able to imagine that, like the prayer before us insists, undergirding everything we see and experience is something that enables it to be real and, most importantly, true.
     After all, we cannot really aver that we are true by looking only at ourselves:  how do we know?

      "Freedom," the Who sang many years ago, "tastes of reality."  As many of you may know, yesterday the U.S. remembered 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 responding to truth, if it is expressed in a structure of form and meaning.  Freedom recognizes that unless there is abiding truth, unless there is something within which to be free, being free is no more than the ability to engage in 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, the discovery of truth.  We do not discover truth in an accidental universe without definition; we discover truth in a universe made real by truth itself.
     Thanks, Dr. King, for showing us the importance, and imperative, of freedom:  in ways large and small, we cannot live without it.
     Oddly enough, neither can God.  But that's a much larger question.

     Are we disposable?  A recent work by Josh Kline, an artist living in New York, speaks to this question.  It's called "Cost of Living," and features a cart with various objects, including a head, shoe, spray bottles, and notepads.  It's not intended to last, nor is it expected to emphasize any connections between its parts.  This work is a statement about the culture of disposability that seems rampant in many parts of the West today. We are so quick to dispose and disconnect, so eager to find the new, so happy to replace what we have for what we believe to be something better, something improved, something that we believe will allow us to do something a little bit more easily.  Many of us live to dispose.
     Things do wear out, of course, and we may well find virtue in supplanting what we have always used to do something with something which enables us to do it more effectively.  Time, and ingenuity, march on.  It's nature of humanness to innovate and change.
     Yet I wonder if in constantly innovating we forget the weight of what has preceded us, the force of the many streams of tradition that have shaped what we are capable of doing today.  As Isaac Newton remarked in response to his alleged genius in discovering gravity, "I stand on the shoulders of giants."  Newton was well aware that what had been had been, the state of science and culture to that point, had prepared and enabled him to come up with his pivotal insight into the nature of the universe.  He knew he could not operate in the isolation of the present moment.
     So yes, we replace, and yes, we change.  For those of us in the West, this is easier to do than it has ever been.  Increased opportunities for recycling, commercial pressure to devise new products or variations of existing ones, and our innate propensity to suppose the "grass is greener," blend and combine to spur us, always and ever day, to move on.
     It's a tricky balance.  On the one hand, we revere what is.  On the other hand, we strive to see what can be.  It is the wise person who understands that what can be is only so because what has been is meaningful, and this because it is grounded in a meaningful God.
     Dispose or retain:  what will you do?

     Yesterday I talked about the fleetingness of life in light of the recent passing of the twin sister of the Shah of Iran.  Today I write about life's brevity as I consider the passing last year of blogger Lisa Bonchek Adams.  Born in 1969, Adams wrote bravely and vividly about her struggle with cancer.
     As she neared her end, Adams endeavored to set it in very plain and ordinary terms. An atheist, she believed acutely that once she died, she was forever gone.  Her story, as she saw it, would be definitively over.
     Many years ago, I spoke to an atheist about death and dying.  He told me that in fact he envied people who believe in a good God and good afterlife, that he would appreciate the existential comfort that this would bring him.  However, he added, he could not reconcile God's goodness with the fact of death and suffering in the world.  For him, they did not fit together.
     Set before the maw of cancer, God seems futile.  He doesn't stop it, he doesn't end it. Like Adams, why should we then believe in him?  If I tell you it is because God has a wonderful afterlife for you and that death is not the end, you may then wonder why you had to endure the pain of cancer in the first place.  What was the point?  Why couldn't God's goodness flood my life in this present existence as well?
     This is an incredibly difficult question to answer.  Without going on page after page after page, yet in view of life's fleetingness, however, I will say this:  though the hope of the world is indeed essential and grand, it is only so because the hope of God enables its present hope to be real, palpable, and true.
     Otherwise, hope, however emotional and reassuring it may be--and it is--loses itself in its existence.

     What is a life?  I thought about this when I read the other day of the death of Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin sister of the late Shah of Iran.  She was 96.  Accustomed to wealth and privilege, Pahlavi lived a long life, much longer than her twin brother, who died of cancer at the age of 61.  Despite withering international criticism of her brother's actions during his reign, continued to defend him until the day she died.
     Now, however, her wealth and apologetics for her brother are gone, washed away in the steadfast tides of history and time.  Granted, Pahlavi did not ask to be born into the family into which she entered the world; she did not request that she be born as the twin brother of one of the most notorious leaders of the twentieth century; and she could not know, before her birth, the type of life she would live.
     But live her life she did.  And it was an opulent one, many decades of grandeur and political access which few other people will ever experience.  In truth, though Pahlavi's life was more visible than most and her passing will therefore make more of a mark upon the etch book of human endeavor, in the end, set against the specter of eternity, it is as insignificant as any other.
     So are we all.  We are so limited, so brief, wisps and breezes gone as soon as we feel them.  Depressing?  It can be.  Wonderful?  It can be that, too.  Meaningful?  It is that, too.
     Only, however, as even the most ardent unbelievers among us will readily admit, and as Pahlavi has surely by now seen, if there is a God.  Beyond this, there may well be purpose, but what is a purpose in a meaningless universe?

     I trust everyone had a good New Year, full of joy, gratitude, and thanksgiving, as we look to the year before us.  In addition to this being a leap year, it is also, as Americans doubtless know, an election year.
     However, I will not write about the election today.  As I regrouped yesterday after returning from my backpacking trip (about which I will have more to say), I noticed that musician David Bowie died earlier that morning.  He was 69.  The cause of death was cancer, an ailment with which I was not entirely aware he had been struggling.

     
   

     I had always watched Bowie's musical evolution with interest, initially wondering how much was show and how much was genuine creativity.  After a couple of decades, I decided that it was more the latter, that like many other musicians who have crossed the paths of Western culture, Bowie managed to blend his musical vision with prevailing cultural mores and circumstances to produce some highly innovative, and memorable, work.
     A few years ago, I blogged on one of his songs, "Heroes."  I said that we all want to be heroes, we all want to take hold of a destiny, we all want to be free, free to make the world for us, free to capture our life wonder.  And so, I added, we should.  We are made for destiny, we are made for vision:  kings and queens, as Bowie put it, of humanness.
     Granted, we can pursue our destiny regardless of whether or not we believe in God. God or not, we remain thoroughly human.  God's presence, however, places our destiny in a vastly different framework.  It sets our lives in purpose, a purpose we would not find apart from a created universe.
     Rest well, David Bowie.