Today is      Beethoven's birthday:  his 251st.  What can we say about Ludwig von Beethoven?  This famous portrait of him captures how many of us see him:  a brooding, brilliant composer.  Beethoven's music overwhelms us with its passion.  It comes to us as a force of nature, barreling and twisting its way into our hearts, breaking our souls apart, forcing us to grapple with and contemplate the deeper forces that drive human existence.  We swoon over the viscerally of Beethoven's melodies, we wonder about the power of the humanness and universe which his songs describe.  A Romantic in the purest sense, Beethoven reminds us of other worlds and other things, of the presence and possibilities of transcendence.

    I thank God for Beethoven.  I thank him for giving him to us, for giving him to show us as we are, beings of mind as much as creatures of heart, living, personal, dynamic entities made to step bravely and meaningfully into the weighty potential and contingencies of life, to take hold of everything that is before us.  Given the many stories and legends that surround his life, we may never know exactly what Beethoven thought about God.  Regardless, he makes us think of him.  Beethoven drives us to wonder about the mystery of life and the mind of its creator.

     I thank God for using Beethoven to open and unfold for us glimpses of what we, life, and God, can be.