A Romanian by birth, Emil Cioran lived most of his life in Paris, where he died in 1995. He is best known for his trenchant, though some might call them morbid, observations about the rhythms of life and death.  In contrast to most pessimists, however, he focused not on the certainty of death but on what he called the "laughable accident" of birth.  Why, really, he asked constantly, are we born?


   It's actually a very good question.   If we are believers in God, we might respond that we're born because God wanted us to be here.  But this doesn't really answer the question; it simply pushes it to another one:  why did God want us to be here?  If we do not believe in God, however, the only way that we can respond is that, well, we just happened.  That whether through dint of pattern or circumstance, the shapes and forms of the cosmos brought us into existence.  Yet this doesn't really answer the question, either:  it merely leaves us wondering about the essence of these shapes and forms.  Why us?

      We can therefore come away from Cioran's conclusion thinking two things.  Neither gives us a complete answer to his question.  Hence, we can foist the fact of our presence onto the mysterious and impersonal permutations of the cosmos and see ourselves, as Cioran points out, accidents.  Or we can attribute our presence to a greater mystery still: God.
     Which do you prefer?

Arlington 

    Today, in America anyway, is Memorial Day.  In addition to the many barbecues and gatherings this holiday spawns, it also births numerous displays of patriotism, even, dare I say, jingoism, among the American populace.  Lots of flags, lots of parades, lots of honoring of veterans.

     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 and broken 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 nation, peace in the world, and peace in our hearts.  Although some wars might seem necessary, they are never good.  War will not bring peace.  It will only bring more war.
     War also reminds us that, as countless religions attest, we do not grow by seeking our own welfare and safety but those of others.  Over and above it all, we are called to seek the common good and not solely our own.
     We all want to survive, yes, but we should all want everyone else to survive, too.
     

     Memory again.  As the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov's memoir, Speak Memory, tells us, it is good to remember.  But to what end?  As we live out our lives, we indeed hope that our memory speaks to us, that we can see and hear those things which have shaped us, those things that have brought us to points of significance in our lives and which have created the individuated worlds we inhabit every day.
     We also hope, I think, that what we remember becomes the basis for what some researchers are calling "post memory."  What's post memory?  According to those working in the field, post memory is the memory that we construct from the ashes of traumatic and painful memory, the recollections that we, in a real sense, resurrect, not on the basis of what was there but on the basis of our ability to create a new world in our lives.  A post memory is a memory that has very little, if at all, physical connection to the old.
     Maybe.  In thinking about the film "The Right to Memory," I came across the testimony of someone who had been enslaved to a cult since childhood and who, although she has escaped it, knows that she will forever live with her scars from it.  We cannot fully elude our past.
     So do we seek newness in vain?  Not completely.  Newness is everywhere; we only need look for it.  Total newness, however, will not happen in this existence.  A pure post memory will never be.
     If there is a metaphysical, however, the possibility remains.  When the metaphysical irrupts into earthly existence, the transcendent in the immanent, everything, even memory, changes.  It's all new.

     Have you ever considered the "right" to memory?  Although many people talk about the right to freedom, the right to life, the right to food, health care, and shelter, and more, rarely do we hear about the right to memory.  "The Right to Memory," a film I watched recently, attempts to come to grips with this point.
     It's not an action film!  "The Right to Memory" records the recollection of a Russian man named Arseny Roginsky about his efforts to "retrieve" the memory of the many thousands and millions of people who "disappeared" during the Stalin era.  As most people know, in his fanatically paranoid compulsion to retain his power, Josef Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953, ordered the killing or imprisonment of untold millions of Russians.  It is a story which Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recounts in chilling detail in his many books about the gulags, the archipelago of prisons that Stalin created to kill or punish those who had offended him.
     In "The Right to Memory," Roginsky shares of how his work underscored for him, and hundreds of others, the deeply felt human need to remember those whom time and history had forgotten.  He tells of the joy survivors experienced when they, finally, had closure for the fate of their lost loved ones.  Now, he said, these people could remember.
     In his Inhuman Land, Jozef Czapski tells, in a heartbreaking way, a similar story of trying to track down people who had been left behind by the Stalinist machine.  It is a story that, sadly, has been repeated over and over and over to this day.  Witness the aftermath of the Hutu Tutsi conflict in Rwanda, the persecution of the Rohingya of Myanmar, or the "disappearance" of thousands of dissidents under the reign of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.  And too many more to list here.
     Memory is vital to who we are as human beings.  It is also essential to recognizing our place in the cosmos:  if this world is an accident, who, in the big picture, will really remember us?
     No one.

     In a nuclear age, a world in which more than a few nations possess the ability to wage a nuclear war, we wonder about ethical standards.  Historically, most people, thinking about the need to be prepared, that is, be ready to "deter" nuclear attack, have endorsed the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.  This is necessary, they say, to remove another nation's incentive to direct its nuclear armaments against their country.  It's just being realistic.  And practical.
     Out of this posture, the nuclear arms race was born.  It is a race which no one will win.  Consider an idea developed in the Fifties called MAD:  Mutually Assured Destruction.  If two nations were to engage in nuclear warfare, the end result would be the destruction of both.  In other words, the nations of the earth are are increasing their stores of nuclear weapons to prepare for something that will never happen.
     Is this logical?  Not really.  Although I have long been uneasy with the world's pursuit of nuclear weaponry, I found occasion to examine the issue afresh as I supervised a student this past year in his writing of a thesis on the ethics of nuclear proliferation.  Interestingly, while this student's initial objective was to demonstrate that nuclear proliferation was unethical but necessary, he ended up arguing that it was unethical, no qualifiers allowed. In light of the potential for global suffering and destruction as well as the illogical character of deterrence, he decided that, on balance, proliferation was unethical.  It violates every religious and secular standard about we treat our fellow human beings.
     Not surprisingly, when this student presented his thesis, a number of faculty pushed back, suggesting that he was being idealistic.  Perhaps he was.  Nonetheless, his point stands:  how can we argue that we wish to treat others as we would wish them to treat us when we are developing weapons which, in every way, enable us to do precisely the opposite?

     "Just look out the window, and you'll see God."  I've heard this phrase, or variants of it, dozens of times.  For those with any familiarity with Christian theology, you know that this sentiments refers to the idea of general revelation, that is, communications from God comprehensible to anyone who cares to listen.  In this, the fact of the natural world speaks constantly to the presence of God.
     On the other hand, quite a bit of this idea's intelligibility hinges on the attitude, mindset, or worldview of those who are listening.  Not everyone who looks at the natural world will draw the conclusion that God exists.  The composer Joseph Haydn's stirring oratorio, based on Psalm 19, that, "The heavens are telling the glory of God," is the expression of one who already believes God is there.  However much they may rejoice in the beauty of the natural world, many will nonetheless not connect it to God.  Why would they?
     So we're left with this.  We all experience, to some degree, astonishment or wonder when we look at the natural world.  We therefore need to consider why we do.  What is it about us that causes us to marvel at such beauty?  Moreover, how did such beauty come to be?
     How we answer determines, and leverages, everything.  In every way.

"I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did. I think with sadness of all the books I've read all the places I've seen, all the knowledge I've amassed and that will be no more.  All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places:  and suddenly nothing.  They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment.  At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think:  There wasn't much she didn't see!  But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and all its randomness--the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomble in Bahia, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Profece, Tiryns, Castro talking to five thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purpose holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I've talked about, others I have left unspoken--there is no place where it will all live again."

Most of us might say that the person who voiced these words has led a very full and interesting life.  This person was Simone Beauvoir, author of the ground breaking Second Sex (these words are drawn from her Force of Circumstance), long time lover of Jean Paul Sartre, and widely respected French intellectual.  Beauvoir indeed had a rich life.  Yet she is acutely aware of the implications of her mortality.  As she says, all that she has experienced, all of this, well, it will never live again.  Quite true, quite true.  And, she adds, all this life, all this wonder, and suddenly nothing.  Quite true as well.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues its journey across the planet, all of us, I think, do well to consider, once again, God or not, this all encompassing question:  what is my life really about?

     Yesterday, I talked about the worth of an individual life.  A couple of nights ago, at my atheist discussion group (via Zoom!), we heard and conversed about some recent developments in molecular biology (the presenter is a molecular biologist).  Just this year, a biologist was able to synthesize life, that is, through gene editing, he was able to "create" a new species (of bacteria).  Put another way, he became a creator.  Or as Dr. Frankenstein, in the Hollywood movie based on Mary Shelley's novel, said when he saw the "monster's" hand, the monster who, as he had earlier remarked, "I made," move, "Now I know what it's like to be God!"
     Indeed.  But did he really know what it's like to be God?  Moreover, as I mentioned in the discussion group, even if we "create" life, do we know what "life" is?  Is life more than the synthesis of chemicals and genes?  Is there something more to life than "beingness" (whatever this is)?  If there is not, we've reduced ourselves to chemical reactions, and nothing more.  As a result, we're left with Thomas Nagel's question in his Mind and Cosmos:  how then can we explain our mental and emotional states?  Do chemicals "birth" sentience?  Or is sentience more than the sum of its parts?
     If we're God, we've made a highly befuddling and essentially incomprehensible world!

     How much is a life worth?  It is a question that is asked frequently these days.  As nations around the world deliberate about "opening" themselves up again, their leaders are very much aware that, absent a complete eradication of the coronavirus, some people will continue to die.  Unfortunately, in many ways, this debate has been reduced to a simple utilitarian argument:  how much do we do to make the most people happy?  In other words, better to maximize happiness for the many rather than seek to maximize happiness for the few.  If some people die, well, so be it:  that's the price of the greater happiness.
     Ironically, democracy, the governmental system to which most nations, in some form, adhere, is essentially utilitarian, too:  the wishes of the majority win the day.  The losers must learn to live with the results.  But in the case of the coronavirus, the equation is not so simple.  Granted, some decisions a democratic majority makes will, whether it intends to or not, produce hardship, even death, for a portion of a given populace.  The decisions made in regard to the impact of the coronavirus, however, do not fall into the category of "unintended" consequences:  we know that our choices will result in death for some, perhaps many.  While according to epidemiologists the eventuality of a "herd" immunity is a given, this does not mean that all people will be spared or healed:  human beings will still die.
     I do not have any ready answers to this question.  Though I can set this debate in the theological dictum that all humans are made in the image of God and are therefore uniquely and infinitely valuable, I stumble when I juxtapose this thought with the specter of millions and millions inherently valuable human beings starving because, due to governmental restrictions, they cannot work:  where does one draw the line?  It is a dilemma which ought to force all of us to our knees and ask, in all humility and wonder, how are we to proceed?  Divine wisdom, human choice:  where do we go?

     Did you think about your mother yesterday?  Whether we have good or bad memories of our mothers (or perhaps a mix), we must admit that without our mothers, we would not be here, would not have found life, would not have tasted the marvels of existence.  If our mother genuinely loved us, so much the better, for we would have learned early on that the world is indeed a good place, and that life is indeed an adventure worth pursuing.  For those for whom the opposite was true, I'm sorry, deeply sorry.  Life was likely not as pretty.  In fact, it may have been inordinately cruel.  And I hope and trust that as you have spun out your life, you have found healing and remedy, that you have found that even if your mother did not seem to love you, other people do.  The world is a good world, a personal world:  love is at its heart.

     The sacrifices a mother makes for her children are immense.  We cannot begin to fathom the breadth or depth of what our mothers do for us.  We also cannot begin to grasp the fact of an existence in which of us, regardless of who we are or what we do, are blessed.  We are all recipients of a life we did not make, a life we had no idea we would live.  Like a good mother, God never forgets those whom he made.
     I'm so thankful for my mother.  My memories of her love makes me realize, over and over, every day, the enduring reality of God.
     Thanks, Mom.

     

     Have you heard Brahms's Requiem?  Based on words from Psalm 90, Requiem is surely one of the most powerful pieces of music Brahms composed.  It is a profound reminder of our humanness, our fragility, our mortality.  "Teach us, Lord," it says, "to number our days so that we will develop a heart of wisdom."  Our days are numbered.  We are not forever on this planet.
     The Requiem also uses a line from Isaiah 40, "All flesh is grass."  How can we not agree?  Magnificent though we be, we are in truth "grass," here today, gone tomorrow:  we are so frightfully evanescent.  We're here, we're gone.  And who will ever know that we were born?
     Reams have been written about whether  Brahms believed in the worldview behind these words, but that's not the point.  Our lives are gifts, gifts which we have for a very short time.  If the universe is unconscious and impersonal, our lives are gifts in the darkness of a purposeless cosmos, a shout into nothingness.  If on the other hand the universe is personal, the conscious expression of a conscious God, our life is a gift of profound purpose.  Brief though it still may be, its brevity happens in a wider umbra of time and destiny.  We are grass, yes, but we are grass that, even if it fades and dies, will eventually burst forth again.
     How else could there be God?
     Happy birthday, Johannes Brahms.

     "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?"  Like many of us, my wife and I have been doing a lot of streaming lately.  The other night, we came across a movie called "Still Life."  It tells the story of a person, a person employed by the government of Great Britain, whose job it is to identify people who die without familial survivors and provide suitable funeral arrangements for them.  His goal is to ensure that all people are "laid to rest" with a measure of dignity.
     Tragically, shortly after this person, John May by name, set up his final funeral (his superiors, concluding that the dead did not deserve the level of support he provided them, had terminated the funding for his position), he was hit by a bus and died.  He was forty-two.  Because at some point earlier in his life John had made the necessary financial arrangements for his funeral and burial, his church had a funeral for him.  Except for the priest, no one came.
     No one was present for his burial, either.  After his coffin had been laid in the grave and the grave diggers covered it with dirt, however, magic happened.  One by one, the "spirits" of all those for whom John had arranged a dignified exit from this existence appeared over his grave.  Ironically, it was death, not life, in which John received the most honor.
     The Beatles's words above refer to a certain Eleanor Rigby who, as the song tells us, died and was given a funeral to which no one came.  If death is the end, then, yes, John and Eleanor's deaths are deeply unsettling tears in the fabric of our existential complacency:  who really cares?  If death is not the end, as the movie fancifully portrays, though it remains profoundly unsettling, it in fact matters far more than the fullness of its grief can bestow.
     Birth, a "life after life after death," will come.

     Are you free?  How do you know?  Today is Cinco de Mayo.  Cinco de Mayo celebrates 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.  The freedom of knowing our own dignity. 
     Although freedom is a slippery term, I think that, at the least, we would all rather be free, however we understand it, than not.  We love making choices; we love being able to plan our lives.  Unfortunately, though all of us have this choice making ability, not all of us have the space to exercise it fully.
     That's the greatest tragedy of all.  We cannot therefore help but rejoice on Cinco de Mayo. Moreover, if we contend that we are people of faith, people who believe in a freely loving God, we demean that God when we parody or criticize, in any way, this day.
     We cannot laud freedom, much less God, when we despise those who legitimately exercise and affirm both.

     Fifty years.  Fifty years ago today, a group of National Guardsmen opened fire on students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.  Four students died, another suffered permanent paralysis from the waist down.  All the shooters were acquitted in a court of law.  It was an unspeakable tragedy.

     Oh, one might say, the guardsmen were protecting themselves from a potentially violent student demonstration, one of many that erupted around the nation over the news that then president Richard Nixon ordered American fighters to bomb Cambodia.  To the protestors, it was an unnecessary escalation in an already too much escalated conflict in a nation whose future, it turned out, had very little to do with American power and influence in the world.  For the president, it was an essential step to end prolonged fighting in neighboring Vietnam.  To the guardsmen, it was, although we may never know exactly how this happened, ensuring their safety and following orders.
     Regardless, four students died.  Four students who, as it turned out, were not even participating in the demonstrations.  They were caught in the crossfire or, as some of the more cynical might put it, became "collateral damage."
     Americans will probably argue about the virtues, or lack thereof, of the Sixties, forever to come.  As one who lived through that volatile time, I testify that, in the big picture, this debate is less important than the moral fragility of the worldview behind the shooting and the conservative response to it:  the sanctity of life means nothing to those striving to maintain power.
     Maybe Friedrich Nietzsche was right:  absent a God, all of which we humans consist is a "will to power."

     Today is May 1, a day of celebration for the labor movement.  Though many of us, 
ensconsced in the ascendancy of free market capitalism, may abhor or resent the labor movement (and it indeed has its flaws), we cannot deny that, in its earliest days during the Industrial Revolution, the labor movement proved incredibly helpful, even life changing to the workers of the world.  Many of us do not know how it feels to be exploited, severely and harshly, by a management seemingly indifferent to, if not openly angry about worker needs and desires.  Too many people around the planet suffer horribly in this regard, victims of an myopic pursuit of profit at all costs.
     In various writings from the Hebrew scriptures, those of the prophets Amos and Hosea among them, God makes clear that he literally hates such exploitation and greed.  God wants very much for people to be treated fairly.  He wishes for creatures made in his image to treat each other with respect and honor, be it in the halls of government or the machinations of the marketplace.
     Whether you are a worker or manager, take a moment today to remember:  we're all on this planet together, trying to find our way.  We all owe each other the very best.