A few days ago, in America anyway, many of us celebrated Memorial Day.  In addition to the many barbecues and gatherings this holiday spawns, numerous displays of patriotism, even, dare I say, jingoism manifest themselves among the American populace.  Lots of flags, lots of parades, lots of honoring of veterans.

Arlington Cemetery

     Although we may differ on what justifies sending troops into combat, and though we may debate how a war should be fought, we can agree, I think, to be grateful for those who, whether through conscription or voluntarism, put themselves on the line for people, people like you and me, people they may never meet or know, for causes both clear and ambiguous.
     The price, however, is high.  Military cemeteries around the world testify to this amply.  It's tragic and unspeakably sad.  So many lost lives.  And this does not include the even more numerous civilians who, through no fault of their own, are trapped and die in the middle of military conflict.
     Most of us want peace.  Peace in our families, peace in our nations, peace in the world, and peace in our hearts.  Although some wars might seem necessary, they are never uniformly good.  War will not bring peace.  It will only bring more war.
     As countless religions attest, we do not grow by seeking our own welfare but that of others.  Over and above it all, we are called to seek the common good and not solely our own.

     As many of us know, tis the season for graduations.  Across the country and the rest of the world as well, thousands and millions of students are graduating from the institutions in which they have spent, depending on their program, two, four, even ten years.  It's a big moment.

     And with these graduations come the speakers.  Some are famous, some are not.  Regardless, the themes remain the same:  do good, set goals, embrace challenge, take hold of what is before you, change the world.  And why not?  These graduates are poised to step into new lives, equipped, they--and we--hope, to make a difference on the planet.
     What about humility?  In a book I wrote a number of years ago (Thinking about God:  Reflections on a Considered Life), I noted that humility is, basically, a sense of place.  Amidst the commemorative bacchanalia and institutional glory, what will matter most in these times is the degree to which these graduates recognize their place in the world, that they are ultimately no different than anyone else.  Whether they are grandly inspired or driven, they remain people who are inherently human, inseparably connected to all things.
    And God.  We are drops in a vast ocean of humanity, an ocean in an even vaster cosmos, a cosmos in an even vaster, indeed, infinite, God.  We cannot escape the marvel--and insignificance--of our place.
     Change yourself, graduates, change the world.  And find your truest place:  step into God.

     Jesus?  As the Christian church in America continues to roil with political fulmination, a group of clergy from a wide span of Catholic and Protestant tradition developed a video in which they urged its listeners to think anew about what invoking the name of Jesus really means.
     (View the link:  https://sojo.net/articles/what-about-jesus)

     Christians can certainly disagree on political issues and positions.  Indeed, they should:  we do not wish to be robots!  When those debating invoke the name of Jesus, however, we have problems:  which Jesus are we talking about?  Or as Rod Steiger, playing Pontius Pilate in Franco Zefferelli's movie Jesus of Nazereth, asked Jesus' accusers, "Whose Jesus?" [are you bringing before me]
     It's a very good question.  Whose Jesus, indeed?
     Jesus is far more than a political football.  Ultimately, he is the infinite and, we should always realize, not fully fathomable, God.
     Be careful, exceedingly careful, in how you use him.

     What's apocalyptic?  From most of us, it points to a cataclysmic event, a pivotal moment, a titanic shift of space and time that reshapes the nature of reality.  Historians talk about it, theologians expound on it, and everyone else ponders how it fits into the end of the world.

     Although the world will not end for many more billions of years, the idea of an apocalypse fascinates us.  We love its intrigue, its power, its possibility.  We would love to know, really, how everything will come to a close, how this unspeakably vast cosmos will one day draw to its nadir, its denouement.  Will it be an end of power?  Or will it be a closure of gentle rumbling?

     For all of our intellectually driven sensibilities, we remain creatures of the recondite and unknown.  We love to see what we cannot see.
     But where, in a dark universe absent of God, do we find the light?
     We all know we need it.

     A neighbor of ours, a person from whom we have lived across the street for nearly twenty-six years, has moved.  After a difficult divorce and watching two children go into the world, he decided it's time to go, too.

     As Jim went through his belongings, as he sorted through decades of memories, saving some but tossing out many more, I watched the dumpster in his driveway fill up.  The silken gossamer weight of memory, I thought, here today, gone tomorrow:  what does it mean?
     To an extent, its meaning is in Jim's eyes alone.  In a much larger picture, however, its weight is for us all:  we're all travelers, passing through, roaming the hills and valleys of our imaginations, trekking along the paths of existence, looking for and stepping into our constantly changing vision.
     Good thing there is a God.
     

     Although the name of Richard Wagner conjures many ideas and images--anti-Semitism, Naziism, misogyny, operatic innovation, musical brilliance, and more--Wagner, whose birthday is today, is ultimately a profound, albeit troubling, portrait of the human ability to create.  To this day, opera houses around the world endeavor to perform the various parts of his so-called "Ring Cycle," his complex tale of quest, war, and passion among the gods.  Similarly, many groups of musicians in all parts of the planet strive to present the fullness of Wagner's countless compositions, digging deeply into his efforts to portray the German philosopher Arthur Schoenpenhauer's notion of the world as, in the final analysis, blind and pure will.  Who are we, Wagner's music often seems to say, if we are nothing more than movements of will, indifferent to and unaware of any other essences or dimensions of that complicated experience we call existence?
     Indeed.  As Sartre pointed out many decades later, we humans are, in truth, creatures of passion, beings of profound will and imagination, entities who daily endeavor to break through our visible boundaries.  We live to leap, to explore, to be.  And whatever else we may wish to say about Wagner's music (and there is much to say!), we recognize his rich insight into the human condition.  Whether we embrace or struggle with God, be it one of our own making or one who is actually there, we constantly confront the truth about our humanness:  apart from our passion, we cannot really live.

     "Futility of futilities," says the writer of Ecclesiastes, "all is futility."  Is he right?  In some respects, yes; in others, maybe not.  Much depends on one's perspective.  I cite this verse as I have reflected on a book penned by ultramarathoner Scott Jurek (North:  Finding my Way While Running the Appalachian Trail).  In it Jurek writes of his steadfast willingness to push his boundaries, to constantly test himself with increasingly more severe and challenging tests of physical (and, inevitably, mental) endurance.  As the book's title implies, he devotes much of these pages to his efforts to set a new speed record for hiking (actually, running) the 2200 mile long Appalachian Trail.
      Traveling from southern Georgia to northern Vermont, the Appalachian Trail, although it does not share the high altitude opportunities of its western cousins, the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide Trails, is nonetheless a considerable undertaking.  Particularly for Jurek.  As he nears the end of the trail, he is delirious and seeing things that are not really there, and dealing with the pain of a torn quadriceps and badly inflamed kneecap.  Nonetheless, he perseveres, and finishes in record time:  46 days, 8 hours, and 7 minutes, three hours faster than the previous record.
     As a book reviewer points out, however, even as Jurek nurses his wounds, striving to recover quickly so that he can throw himself into a new challenge, two other people quickly eclipse his time.  His record is a thing of the past.
     But his pain and debilitating psychic injury are not.
     Futility of futilities.  Setting records is Jurek's passion, and it's great that he wishes to do so.  But in a finite world, there's always another record to set.
     And one day, as Ecclesiastes never tires of pointing out, it all ends.

     Sweet memory.  In about a week, I will say farewell to an institution at which I've taught for close to twenty years.  It's bittersweet.  I loved it, loved it immensely, but felt and realized it was time to move on, to move on to other teaching and writing opportunities.
     Impending departures of course carry with them massive loads of nostalgia, freighted as they are with the weight of memory.  I cannot measure these memories, cannot fully assess their form or meaning.  I can only remember and recall them, returning to them repeatedly, turning them over and over again in the ever shifting sands of my mnemonic shoals, then tucking them away once more into my constantly forming folds of my cerebrum.  That they have impact is without question, that they matter is certain, that they make a difference seems patently clear.
     Talking with some of my soon to be former students the other night, I caught a glimpse anew of the enormity of the teaching vocation, the incredible privilege it comprises.  To engage and deliberate with young and growing minds, to travel with them into new adventures and horizons, to open their hearts to things they have not heard before, to shape the generation to come:  it's a tremendous responsibility.
     And burden.  But a good one.  As William Worth, a seventeenth century British divine (so some were called in those days) once remarked about his vocation, "This was I was born to do."  Though I'm not sure whether teachers are born, made, or a combination of both, I do feel, and countless students can attest, in teaching I have found my "place" in the world.
     Ah, to teach forever!

Linda Ronstadt

     Even though it's been over a week since my college reunion and Mother's Day has come and gone, I keep thinking about both.  Sometimes it's a song that sparks a memory, sometimes it's a photograph.  On this day, however, it was a song.  Sung by Linda Ronstadt, the song is "A Long, Long Time."  In achingly lovely strains of music, the lyrics speak of loving someone for a long, long time, the singer telling whoever is listening that she will love them for a long, long time, that no matter what happens, she will love them nearly indefinitely.

     Why nearly indefinitely?  As the songwriter well knows, this life is finite.  Our years on this planet are not without end; we will not be here forever.  Until this day comes, however, we love, love our loved ones; we love those who are unloved, we love them, we hope, for a long, long time.
     So, too, I hope I can love my mother and college friends for a long, long time, for many more years to come, to love them until we are all gone.  After all, it is love, love in us, love in God, that drives the universe.
     And it is this love, its source in God, that will sustain us for eternity.

     One more reflection on my recent reunion.  In one of the email exchanges among us after we got home, I noticed this quote at the bottom of one person's email:  "Truth is not relative. . . . It may be elusive or hidden.  People may wish to disregard it.  But there is such a thing as truth."  So said American film maker Errol Morris.
     In our postmodern age, we tend to write off truth as something fungible, something we can manipulate any way we want.  Fair enough, but this renders truth essentially meaningless, nothing more than our own individual creation.  It has no authority outside of us.  And who are we?
     Even if we call truth relative, however, we are still affirming our need for truth.  We are saying that we cannot live with some sort of standard, some type of starting point for assessing the nature of our lives.
     We do not live in a universe without an epistemological anchor.  That is, we require a starting point by which we come to know.  If that starting point is us, we end up only affirming ourselves.  If on the other hand that starting point is, gasp, God (!), we affirm not only ourselves, but we affirm the reason for us, too.  We acknowledge who we most deeply are:  finite creatures in an infinite universe.

     Yesterday, I blogged about a college reunion I attended over the weekend.  I incorporated the opening lines of Psalm 90 into my remarks.  Today, the reunion still on my mind I share the closing verses of the same psalm.  Translated, they read, "Give permanence [Lord] to the works of our hands; give permanence to the works of our hands."
     Every one of us, I suspect, harbors some longing that after he or she is gone from the planet, something of him or her will linger, to name just a few examples, be it a vocational accomplishment, particularly amazing adventure, a loving and caring personality, a work of art, or children and grandchildren.  We hope that those we leave will retain evidence of our presence, a meaningful indication that we had lived on this earth.
     Unless we are especially famous, however, once those who loved us are gone, we will be, too:  there will be no one left to remember us.  I have meditated on these lines quite a bit since coming home from the reunion.  All of us have made an impact on the planet; all of us have touched lives.  Yet when we are gone, our physical bodies never to walk across the world again, we would like to think, I imagine, that whatever we did will be, in some sense, permanent.  That how we lived has mattered.  That what we did made a difference.
     And in the big picture, they will.  Yet in the much bigger picture of cosmic birth and annihilation, they will not.  One day, they will all be nothing, nothing at all.
     Hence do I pray, for all of us, that God, the eternal presence working in us all, will indeed make us permanent, to make us, even after the final star is extinguished, last.

     Last weekend, I traveled to North Carolina for a college reunion.  Lots of memories:  I had not seen these wonderful people in over forty years!  It was difficult to believe, really, that after all these decades, I was actually looking into their eyes.  What a weekend.
       Stepping into such a flood of remembrance is a deeply emotional experience.  I often found myself pondering, once again, the meaning of time, hope, and existence, quixotically wondering how we had all come to this point, how we had built our lives over the many years since graduation.  What did it all mean?
     Hard to say.  We have all lived, lived through good and bad, enjoyed sweet moments, wept over tragic happenings, yet always kept moving forward, moving forward into the years that remain.
     "Oh Lord," Psalm 90 begins, "you have been our dwelling place in all generations, before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God."
     Almost everyone at the reunion seemed acutely aware of his or her mortality, that although they are enjoying life now, one day they will not:  they'll be gone.  Gone, gone, never to return.  And life will be no more.
     It's a sobering thought, really, one that make all of us, regardless of the degree of our belief in God, pause.  What does life mean?  Though I cannot fully say, I can say this:  if God is really there, he will always be there.
     And life, rooted in point, vested in purpose, now present, one day eternal, will remain.

     Tomorrow is a big day for Mexico, Mexicans all around the world.  It's Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of freedom, the freedom of liberation, the freedom of knowing that one's oppressors are no longer standing over one's lives, dictating one's every move.  It upholds human dignity.
    
     Although freedom is a slippery term, subject to all manner of interpretation, we can at least agree that in its most fundamental form, freedom is essential to being fully human.  And while many of us hold many varying attitudes, some positive, some otherwise, toward Mexicans, if we insist that we care about humanity, we cannot help but rejoice on Cinco de Mayo. Moreover, if we go further and contend that we are people of faith, people who believe in a loving God, we demean that God when we parody or criticize, in any way, this day.
     We cannot laud freedom when we despise those who legitimately exercise it.