Over the last few months, as you may recall, I have shared about my aunt Jeanne.  I have talked about her death, I have talked about her memorial service, and I have talked about her legacy.  I have striven to remind myself of the power of her memory still in me.
     One of the objects I retrieved from Jeanne's apartment is a mug on which appears a painting by French artist Paul Gaugin.  Jeanne loved Gaugin, and traveled often to the Pacific islands on which he did his famous paintings of the natives.  Whenever I use the mug, I of course think of her.

     I also think about Gaugin.  Although he came from a very different philosophical and artistic viewpoint than Raphael, whom I mentioned yesterday, he nonetheless shows us human wonder.  A lover of the aesthetic, a seeker of the beautiful, Gaugin opened us to another world:  we saw the Pacific as we had not seen it before.  There is more to these distant islands than palm trees and pure white sand.  On them live people, people with real lives, people with genuine longing and need.  People who look for hope, people who look for meaning.
     While the two women pictured in this painting are long gone from this planet, I see them as such wondrous pictures of who we are.  Made to live, made to wonder; made to enjoy the earth.
     We are thankful for the fact of existence, the fact of a meaningful existence, the fact of a meaningful existence in a meaningful universe.  There is point, there is meaning.  We see it in ourselves, we see in others, we see it in human creativity and, most significantly, we see it in the fact of God.
     Enjoy who you are.