Life is about remembering, really, remembering past in present, remembering the present as it becomes the future.  Memory holds our lives together; there's really nothing outside of it.  Yet in an odd sort of way, memory itself is outside of time.  As Marcel Proust put it in his masterpiece of reflection, In Search of Lost Time (sometimes translated as Remembrances of Thing Past), memory is "fragments of existence removed outside the realm of time."  If memory is outside time, however, where precisely is it?  It's here, but it's not here, either.

     Now think back to the beginning of all things, to a time when, depending on one's perspective on origins, there was either nothingness, an absolute blackness of darkness, or there was God.  And nothing else.  But where was either one?  They were there, but where?

     

     Like memory.  It's here, but where?  We perceive it, we experience it, we sense it, but we do not know "where" it is.  We just know that, in some way, it "is."
     Perhaps that is one reason why memory is so dear.  Memory reminds us that that on which we depend to make sense of our existence, that is, our sense of imagination, place, and time is as ephemeral, yet as real as we are.  It's beyond us, yet it's within us, too, fragments of what we once knew, and now, in an as yet not fully understandable way, know again.
     So existence.  It's here, it's there, but "where" is it here?  What's beyond its darkness?  Though it is difficult to say precisely, today, this day in the middle of Holy Week, a week of terror as well as joy, we can say this:  it will never be darkness we cannot overcome.  Always, always, there is the love and vision of God.

     This year, due to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar, Passover and Easter occur only a few days apart from each other.  As you may know, Passover remembers and commemorates how many centuries past God liberated the Hebrews from a four hundred year captivity in Egypt, delivering them, eventually, into the promised land.  It began a few nights ago.  Around the world, millions of Jewish families gathered for the seder meal, the meal whose various components point to the elements of captivity and liberation.  The structure of the seder has not changed since Moses instituted it over three millennia ago.  Passover is central to the Jewish tradition.

     When Moses laid out the instructions for Passover, he specified that it begin with the sacrifice of a lamb, a lamb whose blood would be spread on the doorposts of every Hebrew home in Egypt.  When God subsequently executed his final judgment on Egypt and its enslavement of the Hebrews, he "passed over" the homes on which a lamb's blood had been placed.

      Remember our Jewish brethren this week.  Remember their remembering of God's love for them.  And in a few days hence, remember Jesus, the Jew whose love for the world compelled him to die, and rise, for the liberation of all peoples.
     Remember the weight of glory, the glory of life, the glory of memory:  the glory of the love of God.

      Tomorrow is the Vernal Equinox, otherwise known as the first day of spring.  For those of us who live in the colder climes of the planet, the Equinox is a day for which we wait, some of us patiently, others not, enduring or, for some, enjoying, a few or many months of snow, cold, and generally harsher meteorological conditions until, one day, spring comes.

     In chapter thirteen of the third book of his Anna Karenin, Leo Tolstoy writes eloquently about spring, thinking, no doubt, about the often difficult Russian winters, 

"Invisible larks broke into song above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits began to cry over the low lands and marshes, still bubbly with water not yet swept away; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky, uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where they had shed their winter coats, began to low in the pastures; lambs with crooked legs frisked round their bleating mothers who were losing their fleece; swift-footed children ran about the paths drying with imprints of bare feet; there was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing their ploughs and harrows.
"Spring had really come."

     Indeed.  Spring is a time to celebrate and be thankful, to be thankful for the rhythms of a purposefully created world, the patterns of a deliberately meaningful planet, a planet sustained ultimately by personal presences greater than itself:  we all have a point.

     We all are moments of meaning.

     If you have time, listen to a bit of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, performed by world famous violinist Itzhak Perlman and his chamber orchestra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKthRw4KjEg

     By the way, I'll be traveling next week and won't be posting.  Talk to you soon!

     In his Under Western Eyes, Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad (author of Heart of Darkness) writes insightfully about the nature of a vexing ethical dilemma:  how do we balance our fears of tyranny with our fears of ourselves?  As Conrad tells the story, when a man named Haldin comes to a younger man, Razumov, to tell him that it was he who threw the bomb that assassinated a leading governmental figure, Razumov must make a choice.  Should he, out of fear of the government, betray this person and give his name and location to the authorities?  Or should he obey the dictates of his conscience and not say a thing?  Should he elevate his hopes for a better world over his fears of being destroyed by this one?

     Although I will not spoil the plot for you, I share this much to make a point about the nature of morality.  As numerous ethicists have observed, every human being on this planet has a moral sense.  That is, every person has a sense of right or wrong, however he or she defines them.  Humans are inherently moral beings:  we make moral choices and decisions.  As do, after a fashion, some of our fellow animals in the mammalian kingdom.

     Only the human being, as far as we know, however, has the option of rendering these choices in the frame of a larger point.  Only the human being can look beyond his or her individual choice to a bigger picture of moral virtue and probity.  And this makes all the difference:  whatever choice Razumov makes, he will make in light of a transcendence that pervades all that he knows.  As do all of us.

     As readers of this novel as well as Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment know, morality is only secure and meaningful as the adequacy of that in which it is grounded, be it transcendent or immanent.

     And if we are finite, which has the bigger point?

     Although COVID-19 is dominating the news lately, if you're Irish or have some Irish in you, you may well be thinking about another thing today:  St. Patrick's Day.  Patron saint of and missionary to the Irish nation, St. Patrick came into a remote and unsettled land dominated by various strands of Celtic religious thought and proceeded to teach and explain the Christian gospel.

     It seems that he did so rather successfully, too.  Despite what has historically been often very deep cultural rifts among the Irish populace, Christianity is still admired and celebrated throughout the land. God and Jesus remain very important.
     One of the beauties of St. Patrick's Day is that although it is a commemoration of the saint's supposed day of death, it is on the other hand a day of celebration.  Sure, some people celebrate to excess, but usually even this is done with every good intention:  life is beautiful!
     Amidst the revelry, however, we overlook the profundity of what Patrick had to say.  Consider one of his meditations on Psalm 46:

     "Be still and know that I am God.
      Be still and know that I am.
      Be still and know.
      Be still.
      Be."

     Amidst the "beingness" and celebration, Patrick is saying, remember from whom it all comes.  "Be" in the fact of the creator.  Understand what life is really all about.

      Many years ago, I had occasion to write a short essay about emptiness.  Emptiness is an odd thing, really, a condition we cannot contemplate short of being in a position where we are experiencing it--and then we are no longer experiencing it.  Nonetheless, emptiness is a notion worth thinking about:  what does it mean to occupy, much less experience, a condition of total absence?

     I thought about emptiness anew when I recently read an article about the Japanese village of Kesen.  As you may recall, this month marks ten years since an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, fractured and drowned this little enclave on the northern Japanese coast.  Hundreds of people died, instantly, and many more lost their homes.  The village was leveled, never to be what it once was again.

     

     Over the ensuing years, a few inhabitants of Kesen returned to try to rebuild what they once had.  Others had never left.  Despite their best efforts, however, everyone realizes that the life they once had in Kesen will never be theirs to experience again:  the emptiness will linger forever.

     So it is with emptiness.  Even if we try to fill it, we cannot erase it.  We cannot put together what has been broken beyond repair, to reassemble what has been eradicated beyond its ability to once again be.  And that's the point about emptiness, a point that is both its horror and virtue; it is emptiness's eternality that reminds us of its meaninglessness apart from a larger hope.

     Emptiness is a call to mourn.  It is also a call to hope.  It is a call to remember and find the power of memory once more.  As some of the former residents of Kesen take time this month to remember the day on which their lives were shattered and irrecoverably changed, to remember the emptiness that fell upon them, we around the world might join with them in stepping into the power of a moment that, because this is a purposeful world made by a purposeful God, it, despite all its problems, sustains us.

      Beth Moore?  You may not know who Beth Moore is, but I mention her because she has recently caused no small stir in the world of American evangelicalism.  After much thought and prayer, she announced that she was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention.  Among other things, she cited the "staggering" disorientation of seeing the Convention's leaders, men, always men, steadfastly support former president Donald Trump when his personal life and behavior should give them every reason not to do so.  The social and cultural fallout from this support has, in Ms. Moore's eyes, greatly eroded any credibility the Convention may have had in the larger public sphere.  Its support of the former president, she said, has seriously undermined the Convention's ability to sustain a meaningful Christian witness in the world.

     You may admire the former president, you may not.  You may appreciate some of things he did while he was in office, you may not.  Either way, Beth Moore's announcement should be a wake up call to all those who call Jesus Christ their lord: in matters of faith, how pragmatic ought one to be?

     No one of course is consistent in his or her beliefs.  No surprises there.  Nonetheless, believers of any strip tread a very fine line between believing that God is working in the world and enlisting the help of those in the world to ensure that he continues to do so.

     In other words, how big is God?

     We simply cannot imagine.

      Yesterday, my mother would have turned ninety-nine years old.  As I was reflecting on this, I thought back to when my siblings and I hiked up California's Mt. Baden-Powell to scatter, as she had asked we do, her ashes.  As we had finished up, each of us was standing, alone, at various points on the summit, contemplating the enormity of what it all meant.

     As I gazed across the landscape, the rows of peaks over which I had hiked since childhood, and looked into the sky, I saw a crow, soaring up the air currents to the summit.  As I watched the crow, it seemed to hover directly in front of me, almost looking at me.

     For a moment, I felt as if I was looking at my mother, as if she was affirming her continuing presence to me.  Maybe so.  That aside, the crow also reminded me of the opening verses of Genesis.  In verse two, the writer states that, "The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face/surface of the deep.  And the spirit of God hovered over the face/surface of the waters."

     Life is replete with loss and tragedy.  We all know this very well.  Yet in the image of that crow, I was reminded that, existentialism and absurdity aside, if this life is to mean anything, anything at all, there must be eternal form and presence.

     Otherwise, we're all spinning our wheels for a life we will never really know.

 

     In this week, as Lent's journey continues, we have opportunity to rethink our longing for control.  Lent is all about giving up.  We give up our time, we give up our pursuits, we give up our lives.  We give up security.  We recognize that we live in a world beyond our limits.  We acknowledge that if we try to control everything, we will inevitably end up creating a world of us and us alone, a world without any real point except poor little us.  We reduce ourselves to a collection of atoms spinning madly in a preordained nexus of space and time, avoiding everything but ourselves.

     Lent is one of God's way of telling us that though we are remarkable creatures, seemingly capable of directing the course of our lives, we will never be able to do entirely.  Lent reminds us that we are finite, that we have limits, that our marvelous attributes can only take us so far.  Sooner or later, we encounter a bump:  we realize that we are not so remarkable that we in ourselves can decide what we are and what existence means.  How can we?  We are only us.

     We in Lent are like the "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog," standing before the world, watching, planning, waiting, bereft, however, of ultimate measure over that which we see.

     And that's precisely God's point:  to live wisely, we must give up.  We must give up who we are now to find who we are, in truth, destined to be.

 After all, we will never have all the answers for the tragedy of the broken world.

      As March continues on its merry way, I take a moment today to mention that March is, in fact, Women's History Month.  Why?  For too long, historians tended to overlook women and the role they played in moving humanity forward.  Conditioned by the social nuances of their times, and driven, perhaps, by various levels of cultural chauvinism or myopia, most historians, traditionally male, dismissed the contributions that women have made to the human adventure.

     Happily, this is changing.  If we are to hold that men and women are both made in the image of God and are therefore of equal worth, we err, err seriously, when we ignore, reject, or pass over the many ways that women have shaped human history for its good.  To overlook, deliberately or otherwise, the achievements of women is tragic, really:  we are in truth forgetting the meaning of the framework, physical as well as metaphysical, in which the universe functions.  It's no accident that when the writer of Proverbs 8 described wisdom, he personified it as a woman.  He knew.  He knew that male and female are woven deeply into the created order.

     Moreover, an integral part of Shabbat is singing Eshet Hayil ("woman of valor"), Proverbs 31's ode to the virtue of a godly woman.  And why not?  Without women, none us would be here today.  Some even connect Eshet Hayil to the Shekhina, the much revered, and gossamer like, feminine presence and expression of God.

     Therefore, whether you believe in God or not, believe in the worth of every human being, male and female all.  Celebrate who we are!
     

      As we move more deeply into Lent, the ideas of repentance and circumspection dominate, as those so inclined spend ever more time pondering the exigencies within their lives, the fleeting puffs of materiality in which we have life and breath.  Life looks more remarkable than ever:  a befuddling experience, yes, but the only experience, at this point, we have.

     Given the wonder of the world, it's difficult to rejoice in life without also wondering why life is, why we have it, why this existence has been given to us.  To what end do we live?

     In its call to slow down, to meditate and consider, to let go of the immediate, Lent carves multiple inroads into this question, dissembling the perfunctory and expected and normal.  It calls us to not blast life apart without knowing what we are blasting it into, to stop striving for what will not last, and to relax, as the Psalmist says, in the reality of God (Psalm 46:10).  Lent invites us to look at what matters most.  Who will we really be when we leave this world:  ashes or creatures of eternity?

      Perhaps you can identify with a longing for outdoor adventure, a longing to step out of the regular and normal, a deep seated desire to break away from the staid rhythms of quotidian existence.  If so, you are decidedly not alone.

     But you might wish to be.  You might wish to be tromping through an uncharted wilderness area hundreds of miles from anyone or anything else.  You may seek the deepest unknown there is.

     American novelist Jack London, whose birthday fell in January, wrote profoundly on this spirit of adventure, this thirst to explore, to topple boundaries, to abandon everything in quest of inner fulfillment.  His Call of the Wild captures this urge perfectly:  the lonely yet determined human pitted against the forces of the distant and remote wilderness, the former seeking meaning, the latter inundating him with it.

    

     There are many wilds, there are many unknowns.  Although London focused on the wilds of the material world, it's not difficult to see that in seeking the wilds of this world, we cannot help but find the wilds of another.  Finite creatures wandering in a nearly infinite cosmos, we humans need the wilds of transcendent mystery to really see who we are.

     It's been a while!  After some unexpected periodontal work, some time spent preparing for an art/writing exhibit in May (more to follow on this), a teaching trip to California, and more, I hope to be, once again, more consistent with posting entries to the blog.

     Much has happened in the month since I last wrote.  From a liturgical standpoint, surely the most important is the beginning of Lent.  From other points of reference, it is the winding down of winter and new rhythms in the seasons of various sports and outdoor activities.  From a medical perspective, it is the continuing onslaught of the coronavirus on the planet and the happy entry of several vaccines to alleviate this continuing tragedy.  And more.

     I'll begin, however, with something of perhaps different import:  today is the birthday of the composer Frederic Chopin.  One of the most dazzling musicians of the Romantic Era, Chopin in his too short life (he died at the age of 39) composed a host of memorable pieces for the piano.  His works are marked by an exuberance of life that resonates with the sounds of memory and contemplation.  We listen to them today and think about how his modest Polish origins blended with his relatively cosmopolitan lifestyle (he was well acquainted with Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and the novelist George Sand) to produce melodies that speak to many parts of our souls.
     And in the wake of Ash Wednesday, which we remembered a couple of weeks ago, a day of meditation on fragility and mortality, we find special call to remember Chopin.  We remember his creativity, we remember his vision.  We remember his angst and his brief existence.  And we realize, again, that we live in a beautiful yet tragic world, that we dance on a very narrow line between being here and not, and that we, human beings, magnificent creators though we be, find our humanness most profoundly when we submit to the mystery of what we may not believe we really are.