Ah, the Romantics.  Rebels to the Industrial Revolution, advocates of the senses and imagination, creators of a new picture of God.  Sliding in and out of the nineteenth century, the Romantics strove to push Western Europe past its obsession with technology and open its eyes to new possibilities of what humanity can be.  We are not mere robots of mind and materiality, they said, but creatures of the heart.

     Today, we remember the birthday of one of the most famous Romantic composers:  Robert Schumann.  Like so many of his contemporaries, Schumann died young, passing out of this world at the age of 45.  In his relatively short life, however, he composed some of the most lovely and ethereal melodies of the era.  His music was full of fantasy and images of other worlds, challenging us to dig ever more deeply into who we really are.

     Schumann tells us that, regardless of what we believe about the world, eternity, or God, we are, in our essence, beings of emotion, passion, and pathos.  We develop technologies, yes, and we appreciate what our minds can do.  Ultimately, however, we are destined to look past our mental machinations, and to contemplate why we even have such things, to ponder, wonder, and celebrate our ability to be creatures who, made in the image of God, can birth a dream.