Now that I am finished traveling for a while, I write to first, send readers a greeting from the heartland of America; and second, to try, once more, to offer some thoughts which I hope people will find edifying, useful, and otherwise.
     There is much to say, of course, and I hope that all of us can say the same.  We definitely owe it to ourselves to engage with and meditate on the world so as to develop new perspectives on what life and meaning are all about.  For me, I often find the most meaningful insights in being in the mountains.
     So it was that in the course of my recent wilderness wanderings, this time in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies, I one morning came upon a young black bear.  Knowing that unlike their larger counterparts, the grizzly, black bears rarely attack humans, I had no fear of being so close to him/her.  So I watched.  S/he was steadily making his/her way through an expanse of berry bushes, munching away at everything s/he could see.  I was happy for this bear, happy that s/he could pursue his/her culinary desires in safety and freedom, happy that s/he had such a luscious harvest of treats from which to eat, happy that s/he felt comfortable doing so even as I stood nearby.
     In the course of my decades of wilderness exploration, I've seen more black bears that I can count.  Some looked very healthy, some not.  The bear before me appeared to be extraordinarily healthy.  His/her fur was a glistening black, shiny and full, and his/her teeth and claws looked polished and sharp.  It was a delight to see.
     Ah, I thought, how wonderful, how amazing.  How remarkable that we live alongside such magnificent creatures, how marvelous that this planet hosts such an enormous diversity of life and existence.  Many theologians would argue that these wonders attest to the existence and activity of God.  Although I do not disagree, I often think this to be a rather facile conclusion, that there is more to this than we can readily see.  The Jewish Mishnah, written in the first few centuries after the appearance of Christ, describes God not so much in terms of activity but in terms of constant presence.  I like this. It allows me to take in the splendor of the natural world without trying to account, in black and white propositional terms, for how God might have brought it about.  If we believe God to be there, we do not always need to know how he is working or making himself known.  If God is there, he is; if he is not there, he is not.
     And sometimes that's all we need to know.