Now that in the wake of a massive snowstorm that swept through the American Midwest recently, my home internet connection has been restored, I offer a post.
     Amidst the cacophony of Thanksgiving and the onset of the Christmas shopping season, I wonder whether any of you paused on November 22.  Why?  On November 22, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was killed, gunned down by an assassin in Dallas, Texas.  For those of us who lived through this day, we will never forget it.  Although a number of presidents had been assassinated previously, JFK's occurred in our lifetime, in our time, in our day.  We didn't read about it in history books; we experienced it, experienced it directly and personally, experienced it in a profoundly visceral way.  Our world would never be the same.
     Setting aside the seemingly endless debates about assassination conspiracies, the relative value of JFK's presidency, particularly his decision to involve America more deeply in Vietnam, or intimations that JFK might be the "AntiChrist," and looking at the bigger picture, we see one simple truth:  we live in a frighteningly capricious and unpredictable world.  Though we build our lives on concrete particulars, we construct our life meaning on universals, on hopes and dreams we cannot always see.  We are finite creatures living in a bottomless world.
     Only in transcendence will we see what is really true.