What is the measure of a life?  I have thought about this much as I consider the life of Billy Graham, who passed away last week at the age of 99.  For over fifty years, Graham traveled around the world preaching the love and good news of Jesus.  Although he made some mistakes along the way (don't we all?), mistakes which he readily acknowledged, he never lost his integrity.  Graham exemplified the ideal church elder who, as Paul puts it in 1 Timothy, is a person "beyond reproach."  Even now, we cannot really impugn him.  For anything.

     Although Graham is gone physically, his spiritual legacy very much remains.  He touched millions of lives, lives which will outlive him, lives which will in turn touch millions of other lives, touching them with the news that God, a loving God is very present to us.  That in Jesus Christ, God can be known.
     We all live for many things, most of them worthwhile.  As we should.  And when we are gone, many of these things will still exist, will still impact the world.  Yet all of these things will, in the big picture, matter little if the universe has no rhyme, reason, or point.  One day everything will be gone.
     And where will we be?
     Thanks, Billy Graham, for showing us there is more.
     

     Another day, another musician birthday.  Today is the 332th birthday of George Frideric Handel.  Born in Germany, Handel spent most of his life in London.  He is perhaps most famous for his stirring religious oratorio, Messiah, a glorious paean to the salvific love of God.  We frequently see Messiah performed around Christmas and Easter.  Another of Handel's most well known works is his Water Music, for which my wife and I have a special spot in our hearts:  it was the processional music at our wedding.
     As I listened to Messiah's "Hallelujah Chorus" this morning, I reflected, again, on its power, spiritual as well as political.  As the story goes, when George II, then British king, heard its opening strains he stood up.  In an era when people sought to emulate, out of respect, what their king did, the rest of the audience stood up, too.
     Perhaps the king stood out of reverence, perhaps not.  Either way, a tradition was established.  To this day, even the most hardened unbelievers will, if they attend a performance of Messiah, stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus. Through it all, a long ago custom remains.
     This notwithstanding, however, when we review the lengthy span of biblical history which Messiah presents, we find new ways to consider the depth of God's purpose in creation. As Handel understood very well, though God may appear to be hidden and unknown, he in fact has been working in the world since its beginning.  He's not a deistic entity.  Transcendent in essence, yes, God is nonetheless thoroughly immanent, constantly speaking into our life experience.
     Only if, however, as Handel, quoting words from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, notes, we level the mountains and smooth the valleys of our hearts to listen.
     Enjoy the day.

     Jim Bridewell.  Unless you're a mountain climber, you have probably not heard of Jim Bridewell.  Jim passed away last week at the age of 73.  To the end, Jim did what he wanted to do.  Like one of his counterparts, the late John Bacchar, who climbed unroped all of his life, Jim lived openly and freely:  he let nothing and no one stand in his way.
     When I read Jim's obituary, I thought of Ecclesiastes 11:9-10, "Rejoice, young person, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young personhood.  And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes.  Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things."
     God's world is a book, a book waiting to be opened.  We human beings walk before unspeakably marvelous possibilities.  Life is a wonder beyond imagination.
     Yet it's only a wonder because it is of God.  What a glorious tension!
     Farewell, Jim Bridewell.  The mountains shine for you.

     Because so much has been said about the recent school killings in Florida, I hestitate to say anything more.  I will, however, make a brief observation.  It seems that the discussions about gun control, which I endorse, as well as the affirmation about the presence of the Second Amendment, a fact which is difficult to deny, well intentioned as these may be, miss the point.

     That is, Americans should rather be asking themselves what sort of culture we are creating that increasing numbers of people feel as if the only way they can express themselves is by shooting people?  What is it about America that induces people to engage in these mass shootings?  What have we allowed or done that has created this moral landscape?
     A large percentage of Americans, perhaps the largest per capita percentage in the Western world, insist they are religious, and that they, more often than not, believe in God.
     Does anyone sense a disconnect?  Although I do not pretend to have the full counsel of God, I think I am safe in saying that God would prefer, all things considered, for human beings to think less about their own "rights" and more about the rights of others.
     And to think about morality not as an instrument of individual goodness but as a acknowledgement of individual humility.  

     "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, the Lord, the God is One."  Our Jewish brethren have recited these words for millennia.  They live with them, they die with them.  Many years ago, I read an account of a Jewish father in a hospital waiting, tragically, for his young son to die (he had leukemia).  When the young man breathed his last, all anyone on the floor heard were these words, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, the Lord, the God is One."
     Foolishness or faith?  Reality or illusion?  Not long ago, I was snowshoeing through a forest preserve near my home.  The morning was early, the sun was struggling to rise.  Snow lay heavy on the trees.  A few squirrels scampered across my path.  Silence reigned.  Ensconced in this silence, I thought of the famous phrase, "What if a tree fell in the forest and no one heard it?  Did the tree really fall?"
     What if I was the only person on earth?  Would not I go into conniptions trying to divine why only me?  Would not I wonder, day and night, why I was the only one?  Would you?
     Faith, trust in a bigger, personal picture, shatters the aphonia of the illusion of humanness.

     What's in a president?  The U.S. has had good and competent presidents, people who genuinely cared about the full range of responsibilities attending the office, and the U.S. has had poor presidents, people who either did not seem to know what they were doing in the office or, alternately, people who severely abused the office with corruption.


     Nevertheless, today, in the United States, is President's Day.  Although we remember foremost George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, we also should take a step back and ponder the idea of the presidency itself.  No one becomes president by accident, and no one can function as a president totally oblivious to the world--and the God--around him or her.

     And that's the point.  We may love a president, we may hate a president.  In a purposeful world, however, a world infused with point and meaning, point and meaning occasioned by the presence of God, we cannot dismiss him or her as some accidental blip on a pointless canvas.

     But this is difficult:  how do we know exactly what God thinks?  We surely do not.  But we affirm his presence, and we affirm the fact of presidents.  And we move across the skein of the universe, secure in its point, yet always wondering what that point ultimately is.  We look at presidents through the lens of faith:  they're here, yes, but as to prescisely why they are here at this point in time, we dare not claim we know completely.

     Although in many ways Valentine's Day, which we remembered yesterday, along with Ash Wednesday, has become (or, I might say, degenerated into) a Hallmark holiday, it actually has a measure of legitimate historical origin.  Its name comes from St. Valentine, one of many martyrs in the early years of the Church.  Subsequently, as Rome faded into history and the Middle Ages began, it morphed into a day associated with love and romance.  Moreover, despite the way that various retailers use Valentine's Day to increase sales, doing their best to entice lovers, particularly men, to spend more disposable income than they would otherwise to please their loved one, it's still a good day.  What harm can come from thinking about love?

     Years ago, the Beatles sang that, "All you need is love."  In more ways than the Fab Four likely thought at the time, this is one of the truest statements in all the world.  In an impersonal universe, in a beautiful but empty cosmos, love remains the greatest thing.

     But wait:  how can love be in a universe without words for it?

     It's hard to imagine love without imagining God.

     

      Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.  Ash Wednesday reminds us that, whether we believe in an afterlife or not, we are ultimately no more than dust.  When we die and pass out of this life, what remains of us will soon be no more, too, returned to the earth from which it has come.  Before my siblings and I scattered my mother's ashes atop her favorite mountain in the San Gabriel Mountains of California in October of 2011, we opened the box that contained "her."  All that Mom ever was had been reduced to a small pile of ashes.  All her years, all her love, all her joy, all her meaning, all her hopes and dreams now no more than a bag of ashes.  It was sobering.

     Even more sobering is that one day, every one of us will be exactly the same.  Happily, however, even as it reminds us of our mortality, Ash Wednesday also reminds us to realize that we are not dust and ashes only. We are spiritual beings, physical creatures with spiritual form and transcendent vision, created by a ethereal and lingering God.
     Our death is not the end.

     It's Shrove Tuesday.  It's the last day of so-called Ordinary Time until after Easter, the last time to engage in the frivolity that marks life outside of Lent.  It's also the time of Mardi Gras, the riotous celebration of humanness that draws people from around the world to New Orleans.
     Shrove Tuesday is the final gasp of life as it is.  Not that life isn't what it is, but that we cannot understand life as life without accepting that for all of its mirth, life remains a profound mystery:  why us and no one else?  Why are we here and others are not?  Why?
      Enjoy the moment, savor the day.  Step into the celebration, the gathering, the happiness and joy.  But remember:  who are we to say who we are?
     We are photons, we are particles, we are plasma.  At the same time, oddly enough, we are human beings:  why?
     In an accidental world, we will never know.

     "What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal?  The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous.  It means to know that one is food for worms.  This is the terror:  to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, and excruiating inner yearning for life and self-expression--and with all this yet to die."
     So said anthropologist Ernest Becker.  In so many words, Becker captures the heart of naturalism, observing, with tremendous insight and honesty, the inevitable outcome of concluding that we are utterly alone in an accidental universe.  We are born, we live, consciously, deliberately, and often with exquisite joy and delight, then we die.  And we never return.
     Maybe there isn't, as any number of commentators insist, no transcendent purpose in this cosmos.  Maybe there isn't a grand and overarching point to reality as we understand it.  And maybe the urge to think otherwise is illusory, a product of incessant cultural conditioning.
     Maybe.  If so, why are you reading this?  

     Today is a snow day.  Schools are closed, people are shoveling, fireplaces are burning:  happiness reigns.
     Unless you commute.  Then life isn't as fun.  As I watched the snow fall this morning, musing on the delicate consistency of the flakes tumbling through the air, I thought about the story of Jesus stilling the winds on the Sea of Galilee.  As accounts in Matthew and Luke describe it, Jesus and the apostles are moving across the lake when a fierce storm descends on them.  Panicked, the apostles turn to Jesus who, it seems, has fallen asleep.
     Abruptly awoken by the men in the boat, Jesus sets himself against the blowing winds and commands them to be calm.  Immediately, the storm stops and a lovely equanimity pulses across the water.
     Fantasy?  Mythology?  Although I have no reason to doubt the historical authenticity of this story, I will set that subject aside to to make a larger point.  When snow appears to be on its way, I hear many students thank God for the upcoming snow day.  Does God really bend the weather to our advantage?  And how do we assess "our" advantage?  Also, is our "advantage" important than that of others?
     We all find it easy to thank the "man upstairs" when the weather tilts in our "favor."  When the opposite occurs, however, we are not as quick to respond.  But if we believe in a purposeful world, we should.
     If God is there, whatever the weather may be, it is never without an ultimate purpose.  And we rarely know what it is.
     Besides, did not Jesus say that God ensures that the rain and sun fall on the just as well as the unjust?

     "True knowledge," said Socrates, "consists in knowing that you know nothing."  How very true.  How do we know that we are really knowing anything?  All we know is ourselves and our historical context.

     What if, then, there is no God?  How would we know?  Would the world still be here?  And how would we know that?  Because we are creatures of presence, creatures who exist in active presence, we affirm Socrates' insight every moment of the day:  we only know when we know nothing.
     On the other hand, if we consider something that, in some ways, seems to evade conventional knowing, say, faith, we wonder anew about Socrates' observations.  If by faith we are describing a trust in what we do not see but are persuaded, for any number of reasons, is there, we are saying that we know nothing, fully, about what we see and experience in this reality.
     Genuine faith, that is, a trust in God, means acknowledging that, yes, we know that we know, but that we ultimately know nothing.  We admit we cannot fathom the fullness of what is really true about time, space, and sentient existence.
     We walk in a elusive world.
     

     Is it better to know than not?  Is ignorance bliss?  The other day, as I was examining, in a book, Michangelo's Sistine Chapel masterpiece, specifically, the portion depicting the fall of humanity, I wondered about these questions anew.  Would Adam and Eve had been better off if they had remained totally obedient to God?  Or are we humans better served by being born into a profoundly amazing yet heartbreakingly broken world?
     It's complicated.  We all want to be good, we all wish to do the right thing.  Yet none of us wishes to be people who have never experienced life's complexities and challenges.  None of us would want to be born with free choice yet have no opportunity to use it.
     Choice making capacity is tenuous.  It is the door to tremendous marvel and achievement, yet it is also the path to utter destruction.  Oddly enough, however, the fact of free choice affirms the love and wisdom of God.  Better that we choose wrongly than we not choose at all.
    Even, I add, if we do not choose God.  There's God's love, there's God's wisdom.  Where do they meet?  I do not understand all dimensions of the aching paradox of choice; but I do accept the meaningfulness of God.

     Although I do not watch sports regularly, I usually catch at least some of the Super Bowl (particularly the halftime show).  I'm not the only one.  Indeed, far from it.  Around the world, literally billions of people love watching this crowning event of the National Football League's season.  Despite the well attested damage that playing professional football can do to the players' brains, and despite the NFL's curious tax exempt status, people continue to watch the Super Bowl.  It's not a football game; it's a party!

     I often wonder what our many animal friends think about the sight of that many people glued to their television sets for over four hours, eating, talking, laughing.  Whatever are those human beings doing?
     Simply being, I guess, human beings, magnificent, glorious, frail, intelligent, self-conscious and incomplete sentient beings availing themselves of the only existence they will ever have on this planet.
     Therein lies the puzzle.  Where else will we find such an intriguing combination of will, tenuousness, folly, and determination?  Is this God's intention or is this evolution's result?  Either way, it's nothing anyone could have predicted:  life's essence eludes us unless we can see beyond it.

     Today is Groundhog Day (and also the birthday of one of my oldest friends).  It's a day buried deep in ancient European belief and lore, a day of reckoning, a day that marks the approximate midway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.  It is, as those who live through cold and snowy winters, the point at which, maybe, just maybe, things are on the upswing, and that, going forward, the earth is closer to spring than winter.

     Today, we know much more about the weather than our ancestors.  We can predict its trends far more effectively.  Most of the time, this is good.  On the other hand, with each new statistic and predictive instrument we devise and use, we put one more layer between us and our world.  We're safer, yes, but we are not necessarily better off.  We forget what the world is like.  We fail to remember our deepest roots, we overlook the beauty of the rhythms with which our planet breathes.
     And maybe in so doing, we forget that we live in a reality whose meaning does not cconsist in our ability to tame and conquer it, but rather in our willingness to submit to and acknowledge its mysteries.  And to learn that, finite that we be, we will never fully outwit that which we did not make.
     For "It is he [God] who made us, not we ourselves" (Psalm 100).

      Not as well known as Mozart, whose birthday we remembered a few days ago, Franz Schubert was nonetheless one of the most remarkable musicians in Western history.  Immensely productive and profoundly creative, Schubert wrote some of the most ethereal and haunting melodies of all time.  We listen to his music and feel transported, lifted above what is earthly and material, moved into transcendence.  Yesterday, January 31, was Schubert's birthday.
     Schubert's music gives us pause.  If music only told us what we already know, we probably wouldn't get as much out of it as we do.  We do not need to be reminded of what is obvious and normal.  We rather need to be encouraged to ponder what is beyond the apparent, what breaks the seen down, what splits the visible apart.  We want to know what we, at the moment, cannot.
     And this is what Schubert's music does.  Descending into the darkest recesses of his soul, Schubert talks to us about the deepest mysteries of existence, how we walk in a wisp, a gossamer veil stretched between us and the other side of time.  He romanced eternity.
     As do we all.  Every day we balance, balance between presence and absence, perched on a thin line of reality and ultimate destiny.
     Thanks, Franz Schubert, even if you didn't intend to do so, for showing us that life is bigger than life itself.