Life's connections can be incredibly complex.  Last week, Ronnie Spector, best known as the lead singer of the Sixties "girl" band the Ronettes, died at the age of 78.  A powerful and sultry singer, Ronnie sang some of the most memorable tunes of the decades, songs such as "Be My Baby" and "Baby, I Love You."  Once married to and later divorced from Phil Spector, creator of the so-called "Wall of Sound, in her later years, long after her initial stardom had faded, Ms. Spector continued to sing.  She was, she said in a 2007 interview, "Just a girl from the ghetto who wanted to sing."

    Phil Spector who, according to Ms. Spector's memoir, was very abusive toward her, died in a California prison of Covid-19 last January.  He was serving a very long sentence for shooting and killing a woman in the entry room of his palatial home in the Hollywood Hills.  Brilliant musical producer, badly bent human being.

    As I reflect on these two passings roughly one year apart and the ways in which their lives wove themselves together in our cultural tapestry and social imagination, I wonder about the bigger picture.  On the one hand, I see a very talented producer and gifted singer collaborating to produce tuneful music that we remember even to this day.  On the other hand, I see two flawed (as we all are) image bearers who, like all of us, simply wanted to be loved and appreciated and have opportunity to live out their given capacities to the fullest.

    And to what end?  Surely, not merely to live and then die.  I am therefore grateful that mortality is but a measure of its greater and defining moment.

    Take some time to listen to "Be My Baby."  Then wonder aloud at the grand puzzle of an open-ended finite existence.