Tisha B'Av.  One of the most solemn days on the Jewish calendar, Tisha B'Av ("Ninth [day] of Av") (Av is the fifth month in the Jewish calendar) remembers the destruction of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem:  the first one, built by Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C., and the second, built after the Exile and destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.  Commemorated yesterday, Tisha B'Av is a day (and night) of intense summer mourning; in fact, many Jews see the entire summer as a time to remember and mourn the loss of the temples.

    In the "modern" age that most of us occupy, we may not readily identify with the destruction of temples built so many centuries ago.  Yet like most buildings of note, temples are repositories of memory.  People look to temples to remind themselves of what has been, what is, what could be, and what one day will be.  They find in temples conduits and expressions of the collective consciousness that sustains them, the corporate beliefs on which their spiritual sensibilities and inclinations are grounded:  the traditions that endure.

     People also look to temples to remind themselves of the fact and presence of hope.  Although the temples of Jerusalem were destroyed, the hope, the perduring hope in the love of a good God, continues:  remembering the destruction of a temple tells people that their hope does not lie solely in the structures of this present reality.  Their hope rather rests in something, in someone whose longevity and purview exceed that of all the world's empires combined.  It is a hope, indeed, an active conviction and belief, that regardless of the turns of earthly history, there is someone who will always be greater and more, a lasting foundation of point and meaning.

     And that life is therefore ever more than what we now see.