A few months ago, I wrote about musician David Bowie's song, Starman.  When I heard it again last night, I thought about it again.  What strikes me about it is its chorus, which talks about the Starman, lurking and hovering over us on the planet, maybe wanting to come down, but thinking that if he does, it will "blow our minds."  This is so much, it seems, like us and God.  So many of us wonder about God, wonder whether a God exists and, if he (or she) does, what is he like?  What would it be like to see this God, to interact with this "being" whom we think might be lurking and hovering over us?  If we saw him, would he really blow our minds?
     If God is any kind of almighty being, and we were to see him, he probably would blow our minds.  We likely would not know what to do.  How does one deal with a being whose power and grace far exceed our own?  Although countless religions have tried to quantify or reduce God into human terms, to render him into a package to which people can more readily relate, none do so perfectly.  Whether it is the Krishna of Hinduism, the Sosyant of Zororasterianism, the Jesus of Christianity, or countless others, as the Hindus call them, avatars, of the divine, the being (God) whom these efforts present remains shrouded in mystery.  People still cannot understand God fully.
     Of course, given my starting point, I find it easy to commend Jesus as the most meaningful of these attempts, but as anyone who has read the New Testament knows, even Jesus is a person of befuddlement and intrigue.  As he should be.  Regardless of how we try to reduce God to into terms we can understand, he will remain God.  For this, we can be grateful as well as awed.  We can be grateful because we have a point to which to look for some level of ultimate understanding, and we can be awed, and humbled, that we are not so smart and mighty that we can suppose that we know all things.  Besides, how would we know we do?

     We'd have to blow our minds.

     Have you been in the military of any country?  If so, you likely know that most nations of the world have set aside a special day in their calendar year to honor those who have. For the U.S., this day is November 11, the day that students of World War I know marks the day that the armistice that ended that war took effect (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month).  Most municipal, state, and federal offices close, many schools shutter themselves, and a few businesses give their employees the day off.
     I am not a warmonger.  All things considered, I would rather the nations of the world never fight again.  I do not live to engage in and love war and combat, and I do not favor using war to resolve international differences.  Broadly speaking, I do not believe that God does, either.
     Yet wars happen, and many people feel called to or are conscripted to fight in them. Unfortunately, while some survive, far too many do not.  And this doesn't count the untold numbers of civilians who perish, too.  War's tragedy is immense.  So when I think about Veterans Day, I think about the horror of war, and I think about the safety of innocent people.  I also think about the sense of duty many people feel to their country. In addition, I think about the sin of the world, the fact of human compassion, and the beauty of peace.  And I think about God's willingness, in Jesus Christ, to die for us--and the world--so as to set all things right.  And I try to put all of these together.
     It's not easy.  It's not easy to know what, amid the forest, God thinks.  It's not easy to know what eternity, the lens by which all things will be assessed, envisioned, and judged, means.  But it's easy to know that God is present, in peace as well as war, his love for us ever unchanged.  What kind of a God would he be if he were not?

     Recently, I saw a very interesting movie called Europa Report.  The astronomers among us will know that Europa is one of the principal moons of Jupiter, known to us since the days of the Scientific Revolution.  As the movie's story unfolds, we learn that a group of astronauts is traveling to Europa, commissioned to conduct a series of experiments to determine whether this moon is indeed suitable for life.  Previous observations had given researchers strong reason to think that it was.  After a journey of nearly a year, this group of astronauts was about to find out.
     Unfortunately, once the expedition lands, one by one, for various reasons, its members encounter situations resulting in their death.  One falls through the ice that covers the moon's surface; one accidentally spills a lethal substance on his space suit and is barred from reentering the ship for fear he would contaminate its ventilation systems (he is left to drift into space, quickly succumbing to the loss of oxygen, saying that, "I thought I was doing a great thing, but now . . . ." as he died); one dies of disease; another perishes when trying to stop the ship from crashing following an aborted take-off. Eventually, only two are left.
     As one of these two, a woman, recounts what happened next, she constantly returns to the phrase, "Compared to the knowledge yet to be known, what does your life matter?"
     In the final frames of the movie, we see that everything we have seen to this point is merely a recording of what has happened.  In fact, not one person on the expedition survives.  We are only left with a video.  In the final frame of the video, however, we are treated to a startling sight:  as the landing craft sinks inexorably through the ice and water rushes in, a massive octopus like creature appears, its tentacles aiming for the woman.  Life indeed exists on Europa.
     So does the person who administered the expedition remark, "This [image] will forever change the context in which humanity understands itself."
     Maybe so.  Pondering the fact of life is always a risky game.  Yet it's here, and we must deal with it.  The deeper--and darker--question then becomes this:  how do we understand that which we do not understand in the first place?
     In an opaque and impersonal universe, humanity's road is endless.
     

     As I read recently an account of the final days of former ISIS hostage James Foley, and pondered how he felt as he sensed his days drawing to a close (for those who have been living in a cave, James Foley was the first person ISIS publicly beheaded, later posting the entire deed on You Tube for all the world to see), I thought often about the riddle of existence.  For James Foley, life is unfortunately over.  He won't be back.  For him, existence is no more.  (On the other hand, as Foley converted, sincerely, to Islam during his imprisonment, he surely died believing that he would soon be with Allah in Paradise.)
     And for us, life goes on.  When I look at James Foley's life, however, I cannot help but see life as an enormous fishbowl, a fishbowl in which we all are swimming, yet a fishbowl into which we did not ask to be.  It's a fishbowl we know nothing about other than we are in it.  Yet we go on living in it.  And one day, we no longer will.
     And even if a personal and infinite transcendence exists, life remains a conundrum. On the one hand, the Hebrew Bible advises, "Whatever you do, do with all your might."  On the other hand, the New Testament commands, "Do your work heartily, as unto the Lord." Two perspectives, the one rooted in materiality, the other centered on transcendence, yet both speaking into one existence.  So we walk, all of us, a fine line between what we see and what we cannot, some of us believing that the former is all there is, others believing that both are present, the one subsisting on the hope of this life only, the other on the hope of one beyond it.  Either way, we live in what we perceive stands before us.
     Therein is the issue:  without transcendence, without an eternal and infinite personal, there is no meaningful, and honest, way to really know.
     Be well, James Foley.

     What about humility?  The other day I was talking with someone about Jesus' parable in Luke 14.  It is the account of a person who, when entering a banquet room, immediately sits himself next to the host.  But when someone else enters the room, someone of higher social stature than he, he is asked to go to the end of the table.  Jesus' point is that if we assume we are great, we will always be disappointed.  Better to be realistic about who we are, he suggests, than elevate ourselves for no valid reason.
     Living in a world, particularly its West, in which many people are bent on hyperactive achievement, we often forget who we are.  We come to measure ourselves by what we do, not by who we are becoming. We forget that, at the end of our days, the latter will be far more important. When we live to achieve, we subsist on evanescence.  We'll never be satisfied.  Not that achievement is wrong, just that it can become a bottomless pit, never offering complete solace for the challenges and vagaries of existence.  When we live to love, and when we live to give, however, we actually achieve far more.  We infuse our world, and everyone in it, with the presence of what humanity can most be:  beacons of hope in an often very dark cosmos.
     The apostle John tells us in the initial verses of his gospel that in the  Word [Jesus] was light, and this light was the life of the human being.  Whether we know or believe it or not, when we shine with love and sacrificial giving, we attest to the origin and meaning of all creation.
     It all began with light.

     Those of us who followed rock music in the Sixties know about Jack Bruce.  The driving force behind the songs of the short-lived British band Cream, Jack Bruce, sadly, passed away late last month, a victim of liver disease.  He left a wife, children, and one grandchild. He also left an incredible musical legacy.  The music he played with Cream will forever endure in the annals of rock and roll.
     Music seems almost eternal.  Its ability to touch us seems inexhaustible.  When a song writer dies, his music lives on, sometimes indefinitely.  For we human beings who often writhe in the grip of  mortality, we find tremendous solace and affirmation in this.  We love the music we invite into our lives, we love that it touches something in us, something that arouses and challenges us as nothing else can.  We love that it lasts beyond our perceptions of earthly permanence.
     Perhaps we also love that music underscores that life is more than the moment, more than the year.  It is unfathomable.  We will probably never know what precisely was going through Jack Bruce's mind as he composed his music, but we can certainly gasp at what he made it into:  imaginings bigger than anything we can imagine.  Like life.  We're here, we live, we die.  And we imagine.  We imagine what is and what can be.  We imagine imagination itself.
     And if our hearts are open to what is possible, we might imagine a reality bigger than all imagination, larger than music, larger than art, a reality fuller than all the transcendence music and art bequeath us, a reality which sounds in every corner of the universe.  The song of the creator.
     Thanks, Jack Bruce.  We will miss you.

     As we consider the fact of All Souls Day, traditionally the day after Halloween, we remember.  We remember our loved ones who are gone, we remember what has gone well, we remember what has not.  We remember existence, we remember life itself.  We ponder the import of memory.
     We also ask, how do we explain what has happened, what has been?  How do we measure the span of our existence?  How do we measure the value of our days?
     In ourselves, though we may take pride in reflecting on a life we believe to be well lived, a life that has made its mark, how do we really know?  We have only ourselves and our fellow human beings.  We measure by what we know.  And what we know is frightfully little.  Rarely do we ever see the big picture.  Rarely do we grasp the full meaning of our years.  We're finite creatures living in a finite world, a world that, one day, according to all cosmological predictions, will be burned up by an expanding sun, gone forever, never to be seen again.  It's over.
     Take heart.  We know our lives have value; we affirm it with everything we think, say, and do.  Do we need anything beyond this?
     Maybe, maybe not.  God indeed said to Adam that, "From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return." Yet even dust only has value if it has a reason to be, that is, if someone thought of and remembered it, someone who birthed it into reality.  Absent this, though dust could well be, and all of us as well, we have, absent anything in us, no reason to believe we and everything else should be.  It all just happened.
     Sure, things happen all the time.  But why?  The rhythms of the world demand it, the patterns of the cosmos enable it.  Yet where did these come from?
     As we remember our loved ones, as we remember what has been, as we look forward, as poet Robert Browning wrote so eloquently, to what is to come, we also remember this:  if nothing, broadly speaking, was meant to be, then there is no reason for anything to be.
     Enjoy the ride, delight in God:  revel in the fact of personal creation.