A couple of days ago, the world of classical music remembered the birthday of the composer 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 all time.  His music was full of fantastic and images of other worlds, calling us to dream of things beyond ourselves.

     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.

     And why not?  We live in a personal world created by a personal God.  Unless we acknowledge this, we would not otherwise know what to do with whom we suppose ourselves to be.