You may recall that during the first week of August I attended a reunion of some of my closest college friends.  We met on the shores of Maine, where one of us has a house (a family house) on the ocean.  Our first night, as we looked at the sun setting over the Atlantic, one of my friends turned to me and said, "In the sunset, there's hope."

    It's a powerful statement.  For many reasons.  Most of all, it seems to me to speak of a belief that the closing of one day ensures the opening of another one.  Another day in which we can work anew, work anew to do good deeds, for our fellow human being and the planet, to cultivate a deeper sense of the mystery of existence, to wrestle once more with the tantalizing puzzle of mortality and that which lies beyond it.  Another day to be human.

    And in being human to realize, in ever more powerful ways, that we can only be human if we actively acknowledge the presence of mysteries we cannot, in ourselves, comprehend.

    Mortality finds final point in what is beyond it.