"Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "all is vanity!"  Many of us might find these words familiar:  they're taken from the book of Ecclesiastes (a book made famous in the Sixties when the Byrds took the words of its third chapter to write their "Turn, Turn, Turn").  Yet to some, these words seem very depressing:  is everything we do, everything we are, really vanity.  Is life totally futile?

    It is and it isn't.  None of us planned to be here, to be here to live on this planet and, unless we believe that this world was intentionally created, we realize we have no reason to be here.  We just happened.  Nonetheless, we strive to make the best of it.  Then we die.  But we lived, too.

    And now we're dust.  If on the other hand, we believe that this world was intentionally created, we know that this magnificent experience we call life is not an accident:  it was meant to be.  Though we still live and die, we know that we do so in a world infused with purpose.  There was a point to our existence other than what we assign to it.

    Yesterday, the tiny world of ski mountaineering heard that Hilaree Nelson, one of the top ski mountaineers on the planet, died at the age of 49, felled by an avalanche while skiing down Manaslu, the eight highest mountain in the world.  She left behind two teenage boys, a lover, and a host of admirers.  Ms. Nelson will never ski in this world again.  Tragic?  Absolutely.  Yet her passing would be even more tragic if this world had no definitive point, if her being here was an accident, a journey from dust to dust with no reason for it.

    Rest well, Hilaree.

    "They killed my baby, they killed my baby," she said, moaning over the loss of her treasured child.  Unfortunately, this situation is all too common in the nation of Myanmar today.  Unwilling to relinquish its power to the people, the military junta, who seized control of the nation in a coup last year, is summarily suppressing all dissent, usually with brute force and inordinate cruelty.  They suppose they have been born to master the nation.

    Hardly.  Is anyone born to oppress human beings?  Pray for the people of Myanmar.  They are suffering terribly.  They've lost their freedom, one of the most precious gifts of being human.  And preoccupied with other wars and international tensions, the world is doing little to intervene, if it even can. 

    Indeed.  Can anyone stop the junta?  Those of us who are free are called to use our freedom to serve others,  simply bask in our good fortune.  But how?

    That is between you and God. 

    

    "The desert will still be there in the spring.  And then comes another thought.  When I return will it be the same?  Will I be the same?"  These lines are from Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, his meditation on the two summers he spent as a seasonal ranger at Arches National Monument (now a national park) in Utah.  Though I read Solitaire decades ago, I had a chance to re-read it during my most recent camping trip in the West.  Once more, I was struck by Abbey's descriptions of the desert landscape, its barrenness, remoteness, and above all, its solitude, its vast and unyielding solitude.

    It's no accident the the early Christian church fathers spent time in the desert.  Stark and devoid of normality, the desert offers the seeking soul ample opportunity to find the space to divest oneself of all vestiges of everyday existence and open one's heart, mind, and soul to the greater presence, the greater beyond, the transcendent:  God.  As Abbey suggests, one cannot step into the desert and emerge unchanged.  To expect to be the same.  The desert will not allow it.

    Indeed.  So busy do we make ourselves tending to the immediate and mundane that we forget that we do so in the umbra of a far larger, and singularly more profound, point of meaning.  The desert reminds us that solitude and aloneness in its emptiness, ironically, exposes us to the fullness of what can be.

    We can't see unless we let go.

       Have you read The Epic of Gilgamesh?  One of humanity's oldest written stories, Gilgamesh first appeared in the writings of ancient Sumer, shortly before the close of the third millennium B.C.  While whether it deserves to be called history's first narrative tale remains a matter of scholarly debate, Gilgamesh certainly presents one of humanity's earliest attempts to come to grips with the fact of death.

     Briefly, Gilgamesh tells the story of Gilgamesh, the mighty king of Uruk who knew no rival.  Along the way, Gilgamesh encounters Enkidu, a wild man, unruly and untamed who, the king quickly realizes, is his equal.  Subsequently, for a season Gilgamesh and Enkidu roam the deserts and mountains of Mesopotamia, conquering all who dare stand up to them.

     One day, however, Enkidu develops a fever and, after some days of agony, dies. As Gilgamesh mourns his fallen friend, he says,“When I die, shall I not be like Enkidu [gone forever]?  Woe has entered my belly.  Fearing death, I roam over the steppe.” 

     Gilgamesh has encountered the limits of his mortality, and finds he can do nothing about it.  So it is that later in the story, the "ale-wife" says to him, “Gilgamesh, where do you roam?  The life you pursue you shall not find.  When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they set aside, life in their own hands retaining."

     However powerful you are, Gilgamesh, you will never undo or overcome death.

     Nor can we.  Well, some might respond, that's just how life is.  True enough.  Yet this still doesn't explain why, if we are nothing more than a collection of molecules, we tremble before the prospect of the imminent and total loss of existence.

     Maybe we really are more than a cosmic afterthought.  And maybe there really is, as the "ale-wife" suggested, a life, a uniquely uncaused life, out of which our life comes.

      Think about our Jewish brothers and sisters today.  At sundown last night, Jews around the world entered into the most sacred time of their year:  the high holy days, the Days of Awe.  Beginning with Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), continuing with Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and culminating in Sukkot (Festival of Booths) these days give every Jew opportunity to reflect on the past and prepare for the future.  They're marked by repentance and reflection, singing and gathering, and reading and mediation.  These are days of intense inwardness--always in community--regarding one's relationship with his/her fellow human beings and God.

     All of us can learn from the Days of Awe.  All of us can profit from taking time to think, to really think about what and how we are doing with our life, about where we have been, spiritually, vocationally, and personally, and where we want to go, come tomorrow.  In this fractured, media driven age, we all can benefit from setting ourselves apart to ponder deeper things, to contemplating the greater meaning and realities in which we move.

     In doing this, we affirm that we are born for transcendence, that we are made to look beyond the immediate and present.  In these Days of Awe, our Jewish brethren remind us that we are more than material concoctions, more than nexuses of chemical exchange.  They tell us that we are creatures of this earth, yes, but simultaneously, creatures of something far greater than we can imagine.
     Enjoy your pondering.

     In this era of the so-called Robber Barons of the technology industry, one might think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby.  It's a story of hubris, massive and myopic social hubris driven by an equally blind financial hubris, two currents of a mistaken pride that overturned a life to a point beyond redemption.

     Some of you may work in the technology industry, some of you may hold stock in the technology industry.  All of us benefit from knowing and using it.  Even as I write this blog, I am acutely aware that I would not be able to do so without the help of Google and its parent company Alphabet.  And I wager that many of you order items from Amazon with some degree of regularity, and appreciate its seemingly efficient service.

    Few of us take time to look beneath the surface of the industry.  Neither did Gatsby take time to consider the implications of his financial and social success.  He just lived in them, repercussions and consequences aside.  As do, to a point, many of us.  We do not often take stock of how thoroughly dependent we are on industries that, although they proclaim to be making our lives better, rarely do they allow us to stop and deliberate about what "making our lives better" really means.  As they define it?

    Fitzgerald's enduring masterpiece reminds us that yes, we all appreciate social connections and technological ease, but it also reminds us how little we know where they will, in the long run, lead to.  How are we to measure the fruits of worldly "success"?

    Surely not by the success itself.  Because Gatsby valued his world by the values of that world, he fell, badly.  As will, unless we look up from our busy lives, we.

    Ease of living is not the point.  Meaningfulness is bigger than next day delivery.

     "Now is the wind-time, the scattering clattering song-on-the-lawn time early eves and gray days clouds shrouding the traveled ways trees spare and cracked bare slim fingers in the air dry grass in the wind-lash waving waving as the birds pass the sky turns, the wind gusts winter sweeps in it must it must."  (Debra Reinstra, "Autumn")

    It's here:  the autumnal equinox.  It's a good day, a fun time.  Turning leaves and brilliant colors; cool, crisp nights and rich blue skies; the rising of Orion, his three star belt shining resplendently; and light and dark woven with liminality and change:  life displays its glory once more.

    In the ancient near east, the land of Egypt, Assyria, Sumer, and Babylon, the autumn was a significant moment.  It marks the time of harvest, of thanksgiving, a season of expectation--the life giving autumnal rains were imminent--and days of ingathering and celebration.

    So it can be for us.  Amidst our technology and worldly disenchantment, we can learn from our long ago brethren, our many ancestors who placed such faith in the certainty of the seasons, ordained, as they saw it, by the gods.  It's good to reach ends, and it's equally good to meditate on beginnings; it's good to remember the ceaselessness of unceasing rhythms that ripple through the cosmos.  It's good to think about the certitude still embedded in a mercurial and capricious world.

    In autumn's transforming predictability, we also catch a deeper glimpse of the creator God.  In a finite and fractured, change, some good, some bad, is inevitable. Certainty, however, remains.  Amidst our many seasons of life, these days of malleability and shifting sands, God's love, guidance, and presence reign firm.  Take heart in autumn's changes, and realize, once more, the face and necessity of an eternal God.

      It's a very happy piece.  I speak of Johann Pachabel's famous "Canon in D."  Perhaps you've heard it at a wedding.  Or somewhere else.  The seventeenth century composer's deft blending of melody and rhythm has captivated humanity repeatedly.  It's hard to listen to it without feeling at least a lilt of joy.

    The Center for Faith and Culture at Yale University has devoted decades to understanding the nature of joy and human flourishing.  Although its researchers recognize that theirs is a work that will always be one in progress, they have come to agree on a few things, which they have encapsulated in the Center's goal:  "We seek a world in which every person can wrestle with life's most important questions and take hold of a life worthy of our humanity."

    Put another way, to be able to contemplate existence and to find a meaningful life is central to being a human being.  In this, the Center suggests, is true joy:  to understand and flourish as we are intended to be.

    But why?  Because, the Center insists, we are made in the image of God.  In this, perhaps we all should take a moment to step back and consider that, absent the presence of divine image in this world, we probably do not know what our joy fully is.

    By the way, I'll be traveling next week.  Talk to you when I return.  Thanks for reading!

    It's no secret that among the major Western nations the U.S. is one of the few that makes virtually no federal provision to make higher education more affordable. Whereas in many European countries the state subsidizes the cost of higher education, enabling most citizens to attend college for relatively free, the U.S., in large part, does not.  Hence, people who wish to attend college must, in most cases, find the money to do it.  Many therefore take out loans.

   Over the last few decades, the total amount of these student loans has reached nearly unimaginable proportions:  over a trillion dollars.  Some people can pay their debts quickly; others, not so much.  Some find well paying positions after finishing school, but others do not.  They're therefore saddled with their college debt for decades after finishing school.

    Well, it's their choice, isn't it?  It is, but it isn't:  only students from affluent families can avoid taking out loans.  Millions of others must.  Should the U.S. government "forgive" part of these loans?  It's complicated.  The larger issue, however, is the type of country the U.S. wishes to be:  how much does everyone really want to look out for each other?

    Don't forget the common good.

     Perhaps you've heard about American basketball player Le Bron James' new contract:  $98 million for two years of play.  Surely somewhat of a record for professional basketball.  Is Le Bron worth it?  I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. The Lakers clearly believed it was, that even though James may be past his prime, he still has the ability to draw in crowds and sell tickets.  After all, that's the bottom line:  revenue.  Other teams probably think it is, too, as they might have done the same for their stars.  For the same reason.

    Le Bron does many good things with his money.  Among other things, he has established a foundation that assists struggling students in his home town of Cleveland.  But that's not the point, really, is it?  The larger issue is that James's contract simply serves to underscore the inevitable end of the capitalistic enterprise:  the market will pay people for what it thinks they are worth.  You or I may disagree with the amounts, but that's the logic of the free market system.  It's an amoral system:  there's no right, there's no wrong.  It's all about what the market deems a worker is worth.

    And I suppose that's fine.  To a point.  But assessing salaries based on individual acumen in fact reduces people to what Karl Marx decided about them over a century ago:  machines that produce and nothing more.

    That's the ultimate irony, isn't it?

    Is God on trial?  Is God on trial for the ills of the world?  A movie, God on Trial, seeks to answer this question.  It depicts a conversation that a group of inmates at Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp, had about, in light of the suffering and pain they were experiencing, the goodness of God.  It is of course an ageless dilemma:  if God is good and all powerful (omnipotent), why do people suffer?  As anyone who has studied this issue in some depth knows, there are no easy answers.

    At the trial, most of the inmates are critical of God for ignoring human suffering.  Though some speak up for God, their voices are drowned out by the dissenters.  At the close of the trial, however, one of the chief critics, who served as judge at the trial, offered a measured, and conclusive, response.  It is faith, he argues, it is the Jew's faith in God that is all on which they can draw in the face of suffering.  Nobody else, he says, has this resource.  Everyone else suffers, and even though the Jews do, too, they, he says, have faith in God, a faith that, despite everything else, provides, in some way, 

explanation.

    We may disagree with the judge's point, but we cannot deny the validity of his position:  in the end, regardless of what is going with us or the world, we can either believe in God or we cannot believe in God.  To do the former means we believe that, somehow, some way, the world has purpose, and that somehow, some way, whatever happens does, too. precisely because God is there--and nothing more.  The latter means that, whatever we think life may be, it, and we, have none.
     

    Which do you prefer?

   

      Today, America (and Canada) celebrates Labor Day.  It's a good day.  It's a day to take time to think about and honor those who, like most of us, work, those who, day after day after day, engage in some type of vocational occupation.

     Most of us accept work as an inevitable fact of existence.  In many respects, it is. However, not all of us enjoy getting up for work each day. Nonetheless, to work is to be human, and to be human is to work.  Working enables us to discover our humanness most fully.  Ideally, work challenges us, involves us, equips us, fills us.  Working gives us a more complete grasp of who we are in our world.

    When we work, however enthusiastically, imperfectly, or apathetically we do so, we affirm our meaningfulness.  Whether we know it or not, when we work, we arecommunicating the presence of a meaningful world.  We are underscoring that life has a meaning greater than merely living day to day.  We are stating that although, yes, we must in most instances work to survive, we affirm that we are made with purpose.

      Absent an intentional beginning, shorn of a God, the cosmos has no reason to be.  And we have no reason to work.  Beyond the authenticating boost it might give us, a boost which never lasts, why would it matter?  We live, work, and die.
     Is this really what life is?