About a week ago, as I was race walking through a forest preserve near my house, I slipped on some ice and, as timing would have it, landed directly on my face.  Then followed several hours in the emergency room, out of which I emerged with two stitches and a massive dressing.  Happily, no broken bones to speak of.  The upshot was that I was rather wiped out most of last week and am only now getting back on track.

    In the interim, I missed talking about Halloween, the Reformation and, perhaps, at least to me, a big moment, my birthday.  I hope to offer some perspective on these this week.  This notwithstanding, being laid up for a few days, as most times of being sedentary do, sparked a number of thoughts and meditations on the frailty of my (and our) humanness.

    How strong we suppose ourselves to be--until we are not.  In the space of a few seconds, as energized as I supposed myself to be, I was incapacitated.  While I managed to walk the remaining two and a half miles home after I fell, I was nonetheless far from normal.  But in a way, that was fine.  In my recovery, I had unexpected moments to actually stroll through the forest, to see, for instance, the evergreens, still shining and full even as their deciduous counterparts were losing leaves with every passing second.  It made me think about ultimate stability.

    We all long for an anchor, we all long for integration.  We all seek wholeness.  On this planet, however, we will never find it, at least in permanent form.  We will forever be seeking it.  If this world is to be a place where we can at least find wholeness in temporary form, however, it must be a world with meaning.

    And it must be a meaning we cannot assign to it.  Otherwise, it's no meaning at all.

    I'm grateful for a world whose meaning I can assign but never create.