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.