Many of us are familiar with Sherlock Holmes, the nineteenth century creation of the novelist and adventurer Arthur Conan Doyle.  In the many years since Doyle published his first stories about Holmes, Holmes's name has come to be associated with logic and rationality.  In the face of all odds, emotion, and imagination, it was always Sherlock Holmes who used his powers of deduction to solve a crime.  He has come to known as one of the most thoroughly rational beings around.

     We humans treasure our ability to think.  We value our capacities of logic and rationality.  As we should.  On the other hand, if ever we suppose ourselves to be only creatures of logic and rationality, beings who can always use deduction and reason to resolve any situation, we miss the point.  And we miss who we are.  Ever and always, we will encounter situations for which we have no rational explanation.  Life is material, yes, but life is also ineffable.  Life is a puzzle that exceeds logic.

     For some, this is an affront to their sense of beingness.  For others, it is a call to embrace the larger realities of this cosmos.  Life's uncertainty and ethereality point to a greater truth about existence:  it does not take place in a material vacuum.

     

      Have you seen the classic cult movie "Night of the Living Dead"?  Not that I am recommending it--as a movie, it has some very odd and unsettling moments--but I thought about it the other day in terms of how we define personhood.  That is, how do we understand ourselves as human beings?

     Although I clearly cannot address this question fully in a single blog, I call your attention to H. G. Wells's novel War of the Worlds.  While we can say much about this movie, including Orson Welles's frightening adaptation of it for radio in the early twentieth century, my focus here is how it seems to address our very human fear of losing who we are.  As the story goes, though aliens threaten the planet physically, and humans fear the destruction such beings may cause, they also seem to fear how the aliens might take them over:  how the aliens may cause them to lose who they, as humans, are.

     Isn't this one of our greatest fears, to lose who we are?  After all, in a finite world, all we have is ourselves; if we lose "us," we do not know where to go.  Consider Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco's play "Rhinoceros."  It portrays a world in which every human being is turning into a rhinoceros.  Finally, only one person is left.  He is defiant, however, and insists he will not succumb.  Nevertheless, eventually, he does.

     And no humans are left.

     It's almost enough to believe that there is something greater than us in the universe, something, indeed, someone, a very personal someone who, when we are falling apart, continues to hold us, and the cosmos, together.

     Truth be told, I do not think any of us wishes to be a zombie.

      It's a Hallmark holiday (which some of us in the West remembered a few days ago), yes, but it's still a day worth thinking about:  Father's Day.  Some of us have poor memories of our fathers; some of us never knew our fathers.  Many more of us have really good memories of our fathers; indeed, our fathers may still be part of our lives.  Regardless, all of us have fathers.

     I lost my father, very unexpectedly, many decades ago, to a heart attack.  It was shocking then, and it still is today.  Why did Dad have to go so soon?  Happily, however, I have many, many wonderful memories of my father.  I owe so much to him, not just for taking care of me materially, which he did graciously, but even more for being such a splendid picture of what life could be.  Dad embodied for me life's beautiful potential, always encouraging me to consider the nearly endless possibilities of existence.  With Dad behind me, I felt as if I could do anything.  His simple words, "Do your best," still resonate with me today.  He was a father, yes, but he was also a friend, a friend whom I miss every single day.

     I am so thankful to God for Dad, so grateful that he and Mom had me, so overwhelmed that God's loving vision bequeathed such a wonderful human being.  Having had Dad in my life underscores for me that although life can be thoroughly confusing, it is nonetheless a fountain of immeasurable joy.  The world is gloriously greater than itself.

     Indeed:  the remarkable beauty of an intentional and personal universe.

      Ah, the Summer Solstice:  the apex of summer.   Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere can now, once more, rejoice in the warmth and bounty that seems to burst out of this season of diachronic splendor.  Creatures of technology though we be, we still enjoy the changing of the natural rhythms of the planet.  That's who we are.

     The word solstice literally means, "the sun stands still" or "the sun doesn't move."  People who live in the Arctic know this firsthand:  for a couple of months during the summer, the sun never slips below the horizon.  Even though for people who live further south the sun rises and sets every day and night, time still seems to stand still.  Everything seems to shine, grass, trees, flowers, lakes, streams; the sky seems endless, not a cloud to be seen; and the air could not get any better.  The world is perfect, as if heaven, in the broadest sense, has come upon earth, as if a spell, a wondrous and glorious spell has been cast upon the land.
     Despite its troubles, our planet remains remarkably predictable and resilient, the work, however hidden, of a God of love and grace whose fact of presence is beyond our imagination.  In this God is order, and in this order is us:  moral and free beings, free to move, free to seek, free to love.
     Enjoy your summer moment.
     

      Probably many more people are aware of tomorrow's date, June 19, than were a year ago (particularly as it has just been made a national holiday).  It is the date, in 1865, on which slavery officially ended in the United States.  As some of us know, President Abraham Lincoln issued, in September 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation, making it effective July 1, 1863.  In this document he stated that this time forward all slaves were to be set free.  Unfortunately it was not until the end of the Civil War that this goal was actually accomplished.  Those who took up arms against the Union were not willing to manumit their slaves without a struggle.

 

     And what a bloody struggle it was.  So much suffering, so much pain.  So much blood spilled to defend and, alternately, vanquish a lifestyle built upon the forced labor of others.  It was one of the greatest tragedies in American history, one whose effects are still with us today. Prejudice and oppression die very, very hard.

     This is why remembering Juneteenth, as June 19 is often called, is so important.  It is good to remember, it is good to reflect.  It is good to recall George Santanya's prescient words that, "Those who can't remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

     It is also good to realize where we are from.  We're all from dust, dust made into the image of God, dust made to enjoy, to be, to love.  And one day to die.  I pray that we will always live in profound awareness of our place, a place of humility and grace, a place from which we have absolutely no reason to oppress other human beings.  Ever.

     As you may know, yesterday, in Geneva, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a "summit" meeting.  Although very little of substance came out of the meeting, the world at least could see that two of the most powerful nations on the planet deigned to talk with each other.  Biden and Putin may not be the best of friends, but they are communicating face to face.

     

     Jesus talked about loving one's enemies.  He noted that God's graciousness falls on everyone, that the spring rains and summer sunshine come to everyone on the planet, regardless of how they view God.  We all enjoy the fruits of sentient existence.

     Ultimately, we're all in this together.

     The U.S. and Russia will likely never agree on everything.  Their leaders will probably never be bosom buddies.  It's not a perfect world.  Nonetheless, all parties do well to recognize that, in the big picture, they all live on the same planet and that they have all been created by the same God.

     Distrust?  Maybe.  But hate?  No way.

     

     Now that I have returned from my travels (hiking in the mountains of the West), I write about the French artist Paul Gaugin.  It was my dear aunt Jeanne who introduced me to the art of Paul Gaugin.  Over twenty years ago, she and my mother traveled to Chicago to take in an exhibit of his work at the Art Institute.  I'm so happy she did.  Today, Gaugin is most well known for his depictions of the people of Tahiti, the island on which he spent his later years.  These paintings depict another world, a world very different from the frenetic world of the West, a world of rest and leisure, openness and unconstructed possibility, a world which people do not try to shape for their own ends, but a world they allow to speak to them.  And from which they learn.

     

     Many Christians point to God's commands, as they are recorded in Genesis, to Adam and Eve to "rule and subdue" the world as justifying anything people might do to survive on this planet.  This is risky exegesis.  To rule well is to care and steward that which one rules, to let the world be as it should be.
     And not to twist it into what we think it should be.  The freneticism of the West often blinds it to what life really is:  a gift from God.  And a gift is not to be taken lightly.
     Thanks, Monsieur Gaugin.  Happy trails.

    As we in the West begin to emerge from our over year long journey through Covid-19, we do well to remember the fact of memory.  Memorial Day, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, and many more facets of remembrance should remind us of our tendency to forget the bad too easily.

    I say this because even as I write these words, over 450 people continue to die in the U.S. from Covid-19 every day.  Hundreds of lives continue to be shattered.  Hundreds of survivors continue to suffer.  And these hundreds pale before the hundreds of thousands who are dying every day in other parts of the world, people who live in nations that either couldn't get to the head of the line for the vaccine or simply did not have the funds to purchase it.  Their ordeal is far from over.

    Which means that ours isn't, either.  Our creator didn't make us to shun each other, to just grab "ours" and go on.  Not at all.  We're all image bearers.  We're all pictures of possibility, material and transcendent, on earth.  We're all human beings, and we're all together.

    As the Hebrew prophet Amos once said, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

    The ball is in our court.

    By the way, I'll be traveling next week, and a bit beyond.  Thanks for reading!

"When am I going to see you?  Am I going to see you again?"  And she told me, "No, no Mom, never again . . . "

    This quote is drawn from Maltide Melibovsky's Circle of Love Over Death, Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, her report and reflection, with ample testimonies, about the Argentinian government's war against political dissidents in Seventies Latin America.  It is a young woman telling her mother good-bye, forever.  The thought is heartbreaking.

     As the Argentinian dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla grew ever more oppressive, thousands of young people, mostly born in the Fifties, began to "disappear."  They had been protesting the dictatorship.  Without warning, without appeal, these people were abducted by government security forces, tortured terribly, then killed.  Thousands upon thousands.  Their bodies were never found.  In some instances, the security forces threw them, alive, out of an airplane as it traveled over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was a group of women who, upon realizing the government had abducted their children, began to daily march around the street in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.  They demanded answers.  They demanded to know where their children were.  Over time, the Mothers became an international movement, attracting widespread support.  Eventually, some of the members of the junta were brought to trial.  A measure of justice was done.

    Perhaps the worst of this horrific affair is that it was supported by the American government.  Why?  Because the junta opposed Marxism.

    Surely, God's vision of love is bigger than this.

      In addition to the talk of Memorial Day that filled the American weekend news, numerous pundits and commentators took time to talk about and remember the one hundredth anniversary of what is known as the Tulsa Massacre.  One of the most sordid and disgusting chapters of American history, the Massacre reduced a once bustling portion of Black Tulsa to smoldering ruins.  Hundreds were killed, thousands lost their homes and livelihoods.  Many more left the area 

and never returned.

     What happened?  Enraged by an inflated and falsely reported incident of physical exchange between a young Black man and a white woman, a mob of whites entered what was then known as "Black Wall Street" in the Black section of Tulsa (the neighborhood "across the tracks") and set about to destroy it.  For over twenty-four hours, the mob roamed through these streets, killing, pillaging, looting, and more.  The racial hatred was frightening, the destruction was immense.  The Black section of Tulsa would never be the same.

    Much has already been said about this incident, and I do not wish to add another, perhaps supercilious, comment on it.  On the other hand, from a theological standpoint, the behavior of the white mob, many of whose members, I suspect, attended church every Sunday, in those horrific hours underscores, once again, the enormous challenge which all people of faith face:  how do we wish to construct our faith?  Is faith to be a work of the mind?  The heart?  One's background and circumstances?  Or something else?

    Faith isn't about being certain.  It's about entering into and submitting to a relationship with an infinite personal God.

    And all the mystery that will inevitably come.

 

     I had a great aunt whom, I was told (she died before I was born), had four sons, all of whom were draft eligible during World War II.  Three of her sons were indeed drafted, shipped to the Pacific Theater and, unfortunately, died in combat on the islands.  She never saw them again.  When her fourth son was drafted, however, my great aunt, though she believed in the U. S. war effort, spoke up and asked, through her congressman, that her son be spared overseas combat.  In an action reminiscent of the movie Saving Private Ryan, the military granted her request.
     Memory can be wonderful and grand, but enormously painful, too.  As those of us in the West remember people we knew (and those we never knew) who have fallen in war, we can also remember that even if it does not bring anyone back, remembering nurtures hope.  It enables us to look beyond ourselves, to see and experience the enduring grace of existence, to realize anew that life is something bigger than we can ever make it to be.  Life has a life of its own, a purpose, a future.  It's a drama, a drama of space and time infused with the transcendent meaning of a creator God.
    On this day, the day after Memorial Day, we pray for the fallen, we pray for those who gone.  And we pray for the life to come.