"Freedom," the Who sang many years ago, "tastes of reality."  As many of you may know, today the U.S. remembers the birthday of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.  Central to the day is the belief that freedom, the ability to do what one chooses, when one chooses to do it is surely one of humanity's greatest blessings.  Those who have it treasure it immensely; those who do not, long for it deeply.
     Is freedom reality?  If being free is the ability to find oneself as oneself is in this world, then freedom is indeed reality.  It offers people opportunity to find what is most real and true about them, their lives, and the world in which they live them.  It is a path to ultimate discovery.
     Maybe that's why, as John records it in chapter eight of his gospel, Jesus told his audience that, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  Freedom is only meaningful if it is grounded in something bigger than itself.  It's only real if it is responding to structure, if it is responding to a structure of form and truth.  Freedom recognizes that unless there is abiding truth, unless there is something within which to be free, being free is no more than the ability to engage in the authenticating acts of existentialism:  here today, gone tomorrow, never a point to be made.
     As we remember King's birthday, we also remember that the freedom he preached is ultimately, as Gandhi observed in his notion of satyagraha, self-discovery of truth.  We do not discover in an accidental universe without definition; we discover truth in a universe made real by truth itself.

     Have you seen a grizzly bear?  If so, you are fortunate.  They are not easy to find.  In the course of my mountain explorations, I've seen many, some at a comfortably safe distance, others way too close.  Regardless, grizzly bears are rather amazing.  Powerful and hulking, they lumber and roam through their world, master of all they survey, providing ecological balance for friend and foe.
     It's therefore odd to see,as I did recently, grizzlies in a zoo, exploring the trees and rocks set out for them, being bears before watching human beings, animals like us, animals still.  One wonders what grizzlies did before the Fall, before the world was broken, before the balance was toppled:  what were their lives like?
     We can only speculate.  But we can say this:  God cares about the grizzly bears now as as much as he did before.  He cares about everything else, too.  So does the psalmist say, "You, Lord, open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing."
     Of course, grizzlies remain highly fearsome and not to be taken lightly.  They are patently unpredictable.  When next you see a grizzly bear, however, be it in a zoo, book, or in the wild, be happy that they live, that they exist.  Be happy that you share in such a remarkable world.  Be happy that you walk in the expressions of a infinitely creative God.
     Be thankful that life is God's gift to you.

     Anyone who has been a students knows about tests.  And almost everyone who has been a student knows about standardized tests.  Everyone knows that sometimes much depends on these tests.  Indeed, sometimes these tests determine the course of one's life.
     This makes, rightly, many of us cringe.  The world is more than a calculation.
     Moreover, as any teacher will tell us, tests rarely give the full picture of who a student is. Like anyone else, students are more than intellectual machines.  Like anyone else, students are incredibly complicated and interesting human beings.  They deserve more than tests to demonstrate who they are.
     As do the rest of us.  Like God does for us, we can look at our fellow humans in a vastly rich way.  There's always more than what we see, always more than what we hear, and we do ourselves, and our fellow beings, a disservice when we forget this.  Let's open the windows of our humanity.
     Let's walk through the door of the fullness of human possibility and realize that, as God told the prophet Isaiah centuries ago, "Behold, I am making all things new."
     We are always more to find.

     As the colder climes of the northern hemisphere drift deeper into winter, and many people dig further into their brumal hibernations, I like to look at the bigger picture: seasons come, and seasons go, and we are grateful.  Be it sun, snow, fog, wind, or rain, we rightly marvel at the remarkable expressions of the planet on which we live.  We find ourselves astonished at the diversity of meteorological event, the incredible breadth and nuances of the weather.  Though we may not always like them, we can be amazed by it. We can be amazed that we live in a world so full of form yet so full of surprise.
     Even in temperatures well below zero, the geese continue to fly, and the birds continue to feed.  Even, on occasion, the squirrels emerge.  The earth still breathes, the sky still sparkles.  And the lakes still jostles with their ice.  All is well.  Climate change or not, all is well.  It's a good world.
     Light continues to shine, a light of truth, a light of hope and way, illuminating, pervading, calling, enlightening.  So it was in the beginning, so it will always be.  God has not abandoned what he has made.
     Nor does he forget what he continues to create, and re-create, every day.  After all, many years ago, he himself lived it.

     On the other side of the Atlantic, thousands of miles from the pain rippling through Europe which I mentioned yesterday, many Americans are beginning to talk about the next presidential campaign.  A number of people have already expressed their interest in stepping into the office, and no small number of people are indicating they are leaning in that direction.
     Former president Richard Nixon once remarked that, "The presidency is a killer of a job."  How true.  Yet year after year after year, many people want it anyway.  I hope that whoever enters the office does so acutely aware that any power it may bequeath him or her is so terribly ephemeral.  It's futile, really, a wisp of hegemony that vanishes as soon as it is implemented in this extraordinarily complex world.  It will not last.  All that will remain are the convictions, moral, political, cultural, or otherwise (although these, in truth, are linked) that underlay and impel it.
     In a moral universe, a universe divinely imbued with a moral compass and authority, only ideas, in the end, will be real and true.  I hope the next president finds not so much accomplishment as he or she does meaning, for him or herself, for America, for the world. I hope that a greater good, one that we cannot always easily see but one that is always and supernally there, will triumph.
    In the face of material and eternal happenstance and contingency, we are so very, very small.  What does human "power" really mean in such a massive and incomprehensible universe?

     After some time away, hiking, recovering, reflecting, I write today to express my profound solidarity with the people of France, be they atheist, agnostic, Christian, Muslim, or Jew, as they collectively gather, mourn, and ponder the immensity, in every way, of the tragedy that befall that nation recently.  I don't need to describe what happened; everyone knows.  The pain is overwhelming.  It shows us how difficult living in a free country can be.  It's a constant balancing act between license and order to achieve a common good, a good that is "good" for all.
     It's not easy.  Nor will it ever be.  We are only human beings, marvelous but bent, visionary yet frighteningly myopic:  we cannot see everything we want to see.  If love, the love that flows through the cosmos, the love embedded in the very fabric of what is real, is to mean anything, however, it should not matter what we believe--or what we do not.  We're all called to love, no more, no less.  That's all God is asking of us.
     Love:  the most wonderful thing to know, yet the most challenging thing to achieve.  I pray today that we all will find it, and express who we most are:  beautiful creatures made in the image of God.

     It's a new day, a new month, a new year.  It's a time of resolution, aspiration, goal, vision, and intention, a time that our hearts, even if only for a moment, spur us to new heights of achievement, new pictures of who we think we ought to be.
     As they should.  We are creatures made to long to become something better than what we are at the moment, what we are today.  It is part of being human.  We all want improvement, we all want renewal.  Indeed, pity the person who supposes that she needs neither.
     Yet does not the writer of Ecclesiastes point out that, "There is nothing new under the sun"?  Absolutely.  But he also urges us to "do whatever our hand finds to do."  These are wise words.  Yes, life is a merry go round of routine and repetition (after all, 2015 is but one more year), but life is also a voyage of wonder.  It is a journey through the inexhaustibility of God.  We and our planet may be changing, aging, even, unfortunately, deteriorating, but God remains new, unspeakably new for us and our world.  Always.  His infinite presence guarantees it.
     Rejoice.   Rejoice that as the New Year dawns, it is in God that we will experience the fullness of life, that it is in God that we will see the ultimate picture of existence.  It is in God that we will see the highest vision of what we can be, and who we, morally, epistemologically, and culturally most are.  It's all part of the magnificent promise God embodied, in his son Jesus, for us and our world.
     By the way, I add that for the next week or so, I'll be hiking and traveling and probably will not be posting regular entries.  I look forward to renewing our conversations at that time.  Thanks for reading!
     Happy New Year.