Have you seen Edward Munch's The Scream?  A piece that has puzzled and cajoled people for decades, The Scream seems to exemplify the alienation that so often characterizes the inhabitants of the West.  Overwhelmed by a world that offers them everything but meaning, countless people in the developing world cry out for help, some help in making sense of what seems to be a pointless reality.

     Affluence reigns, yes, but without any foundation other than the assumption that life is worth it, and this only because those who decide this have nowhere else to go.  If the world is a closed system and we are therefore born only to die, then life, however wonderful it may be, ends before it begins.  So we scream:  why must this be?

     As we consider Munch's birthday, which fell earlier this week, as we look toward Christmas and the New Year, as we continue to do what we can to live a good life, we realize that the world is not closed, that it is in fact entirely transparent and open, open and streaming into a web of reality vastly larger than we can imagine.  Life is meaningful because it is grounded in a transcendence that has spoken, a transcendence that has made itself known.  Life is more than itself.  And we are more than who we are.  Love is present, ascendant and true.

     Hence, in contrast to Munch's bleak perspective, we scream not why must this be, but rather how can such wonder be?