Monday, May 3, 2021

     "The mountains are calling me," said the American naturalist John Muir, "and I must go."  As we little human beings wander about this planet, living out our lives, responding to circumstances, making choices, devising goals, and constructing visions, we all wonder:  where, really, are we going?  To what are we really being called?

Credit: Corbis/VCG via Getty Images/Library of Congress

     In the big picture, we may never know.  We live with what is before us.  We may feel called, we may feel compelled.  Or we may feel as if we have never had a choice in what happens in our lives.  To an extent, none of us really does.  As philosopher Martin Heidegger was fond of saying, we are "thrown" into this world:  not a single one of us could have made ourselves be here.
     So yes, listen to your call.  In an empty world, it's all you have.  Or better, listen to the rhythms out of which this call, if it is to hold any meaning, any meaning at all, must inevitably come:  the presence of God.

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