Have you seen Edward Munch's The Scream?  A piece that has puzzled and cajoled people for decades, The Scream seems to exemplify the alienation that seems to run through the West.  Overwhelmed by a world that offers them everything but meaning, countless people in the developed world cry out for help, some help in making sense of what seems to be a pointless reality.

     Affluence reigns, yes, but without any foundation other than the assumption that life is worth it, and this only because those who decide this have nowhere else to go.  For if the world is a closed system and we are therefore born only to die, then life, however wonderful it may be, ends before it begins.  So we scream:  why must this be?

    As we move ever further into the new year, we owe ourselves to think afresh about the world we occupy.  It is material, yes, but it is also transparent and open, open and streaming into a reality in which it finds ultimate meaning.  In this, life is grounded in a transcendence that has spoken, a transcendence that has made itself known.  Life is more than itself.  And we are more than who we think we are:  we're images of the transcendent.

    And in contrast to Munch's bleak perspective, we scream not why must this be, but rather how can such wonder be?