Traveling as I was in the days immediately following Christmas, I missed remembering Kwanzaa. What's Kwanzaa? It is a week long celebration of the Africana in African-American culture, particularly its focus on the harvest. Although Kwanzaa ended on January 1, as we in the Northern Hemisphere move ever more closely to spring, we may like to ponder the notion of harvest. We may wish to remind ourselves that despite the apparent somnolence of the land, soon, sooner than we think, its fecundity will show itself once more.
In ancient cultures, the harvest was a time of great celebration: once again, the land had yielded its bounty for humankind. In the material appurtenances with which we wrap ourselves and our lives, we usually miss the harvest. Thanks to modern supermarkets, we can obtain almost any type of food any time of the year. We rarely need to wait for the "harvest."
As a result, we often miss the point. We miss the fact of the land's nearly inexhaustible bounty, we miss the marvel of a world that continually provides for us. We miss that from which we have come.
As I look back at Kwanzaa, I think about the harvest. I think about the wonder of the world, the fertility of the planet. Though I am well aware that certain parts of the globe are not as productive as they once were, I nonetheless believe that, given proper thought and ingenuity, the world will continue to speak to us, to continue to provide for its inhabitants, human and other creatures alike.
We need only remember who we are and why we are here: wayfarers on a vast, vast sea, a sea we could not imagine nor make, an ocean which we are obligated to preserve for the generations which will follow us. We are humbled. We are humbled before the inexhaustibility of a world created by an inexhaustible God.
Also, as you may know, today is Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday is the day, commemorated by the Christian church (and festival goers at Mardi Gras) as the final day of bounty before Ash Wednesday and Lent (about which I will say more tomorrow). It's a good day to contemplate the remarkable fact of our existence.
And God.
Unless you've been living in a cave, you are likely aware that, even if you cared nothing about it, the 50th Super Bowl took place yesterday. Set in sunny and picturesque Santa Clara, California, the game and its attendant pageantry, from a commercial standpoint, certainly lived up to its billing. Lady Gaga did not disappoint in her rendition of America's national anthem, and Coldplay, Bruno Mars, and Beyonce rocked the stadium in their various and unique ways. With all this accompaniment, the game, though I didn't watch it all the way through, seemed almost ancillary.
To the avid football fan, however, it was not. The NFL's continued stonewalling of the growing evidence of CTE in professional football players notwithstanding, the game thrilled many.
As I thought about the day, although I do not disparage anyone who loves football and genuinely enjoyed watching the game and all the entertainment it brings, I could not help but consider its context. Here we are, fat and happy in the affluent West, focusing our time and money watching a spectacle about which too many of our brethren in the developing world could care less. They are more concerned with where they will find their next meal. Or where they will spend the night.
Disparity runs rampant on the planet. It always has and it always will. But this does not obviate its tragedy.
What can we do? I draw your attention to an observation of Paul in his second letter to the church at Corinth that, "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work."
In other words, although we can certainly enjoy, appreciate, and be thankful for what we have, we must also realize that, when we give generously from it, God will ensure that we will always have enough. We will meet our needs.
And maybe we will have what we want.
Over the last few months, as you may recall, I have shared about my aunt Jeanne. I have talked about her death, I have talked about her memorial service, and I have talked about her legacy. I have striven to remind myself of the power of her memory still in me.
One of the objects I retrieved from Jeanne's apartment is a mug on which appears a painting by French artist Paul Gaugin. Jeanne loved Gaugin, and traveled often to the Pacific islands on which he did his famous paintings of the natives. Whenever I use the mug, I of course think of her.
I also think about Gaugin. Although he came from a very different philosophical and artistic viewpoint than Raphael, whom I mentioned yesterday, he nonetheless shows us human wonder. A lover of the aesthetic, a seeker of the beautiful, Gaugin opened us to another world: we saw the Pacific as we had not seen it before. There is more to these distant islands than palm trees and pure white sand. On them live people, people with real lives, people with genuine longing and need. People who look for hope, people who look for meaning.
While the two women pictured in this painting are long gone from this planet, I see them as such wondrous pictures of who we are. Made to live, made to wonder; made to enjoy the earth.
We are thankful for the fact of existence, the fact of a meaningful existence, the fact of a meaningful existence in a meaningful universe. There is point, there is meaning. We see it in ourselves, we see in others, we see it in human creativity and, most significantly, we see it in the fact of God.
Enjoy who you are.
Looking through a book about Renaissance art a few weeks ago, I came upon Raphael's famous work, "School of Athens." Featuring the finest minds of antiquity--Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and more--this painting reminds us of the absolute wonder of the human mind and imagination. If we bear in mind that Raphael's stylistic intentions centered on fusing classical style with Christian thought, we see that he is telling us that the deepest and most glorious thought is that which drinks, drinks deeply, of the best of humankind and the best of God. God creates us, we create in turn. God births us, we birth in turn: we live empowered by the continuous presence of divine purpose in the cosmos. Though we create with our gifts, and though we envision with our human ken, we do so because, as Raphael rightly understood, over and above it all resides a power beyond knowing, a power that gives point to the profoundest of human longing. Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and many others walk in the aura of an enduring divine creation. We thank them for their minds, we thank them for their vision. And we thank God, in all of his expressions, incarnations, and manifestations, for an existence with meaning.
I recently took in an exhibit of Hindu art at the Art Institute of Chicago. It's a highly diverse sampling of how Hindus have sought to represent their deities and their relationships with them. I could not help but be reminded of the art I observed in an Hindu temple which I visited a number of months ago, the many strikingly beautiful statues and icons that the devout have built to worship their gods. The craftsmanship is joyous and remarkable.
Of course the most skeptical of us may well ask, how do the Hindus know they are even talking to a real person? In fact, how does anyone know she is really communicating with God.
These are complicated questions. Even if we assert, correctly, from my standpoint, on the basis of ample historical and textual evidence, that the appearance of Jesus confirms, definitively, the presence of God, we remain in mystery. We remain amazed at the mystery of how, the world over, people, whether Hindu, Muslim, indigenous native, Jew, or any other, continue to seek out an experience of the divine. It says much about us and our human condition. It allows to be, God's image and its conditioning of us notwithstanding, in awe. We are awed because regardless of what we may say, we all need ethereal sublimity and beauty, we all need personal wholeness and, I dare say, we all need to take hold of something, something that we sense or intuit that explains why we are here.
And Krishna, Jesus, Allah, or not, we must recognize that we, finite beings only unto ourselves, will never find the full answer in ourselves. How could we think otherwise?
In short, why do we keep seeking that which we cannot see?
The Secrets of Roan Inish, an old movie which I chanced to see recently, tells a delightful tale of whimsy and fancy. Rooted in ancient Irish and Welsh mythology, it is the story of a man who meets and marries a selkie. What's a selkie? A selkie is a seal, a female seal, who becomes a human being. However, even though a selkie voluntarily rises out of the water to enter the human experience, she still longs for her original self. If she comes upon her "skin," she immediately dons it and returns to the sea. She's gone.
That's what happened to this young man. One day, as he was out at sea, pursuing his family's traditional fishing trade, his children, of whom he had many, came to their mother as they sit together on the beach, the beach of the island Roan Inish. "Mother," they say, "why is there a brown jacket stuffed under the roof?"
The mother, the selkie, realized immediately that this jacket was actually her shed skin. As all selkies do, she rushed to the house, donned her skin, and returned to the sea. Her husband came home to his wife gone.
Woven into this plot was another one. It is the story of a baby who was inadvertently set adrift on the sea and, as legend would have it, drifted to the island, the island of Roan Inish. Many years later, the descendants of the young man return to Roan Inish and, after some intrigue, find the baby, now a young boy. They wrap him up and bring him home.
As they do, we see the seals, the seals out of whom the selkie had come, the seals with whom the boy had grown up, approaching the shore. In their movements, they seem to say to the boy, "Go with them. Leave us. You have found your real home."
What's my point? In the selkie becoming human, and in the seals telling the boy to return to his human home, we see a reflection of mystery, the mystery of God, the mystery of humankind. We see that we humans, and God, drift about our corporate earthly experience, meeting each other, leaving each other, and meeting each other again. We go away, we come home. We find, we lose. We become each other (the incarnation), we become alone (the cross). We talk, we are silent.
We share the universe. And neither of us is alone.
Not as well known as Mozart and writing in a different era of European idea and thought, Franz Schubert was nonetheless one of the most remarkable musicians in Western history. Immensely productive and profoundly creative despite passing away, tragically, at the tender age of 31, Schubert is known for writing some of the most ethereal and moving melodies of all time. Listening to his music, one feels carried away, transported to another realm, lifted above what is earthly and material. It's an intimation of transcendence. Yesterday, January 31, was Schubert's birthday.
Schubert's music gives us pause. If music only told us what we already know, we probably wouldn't get as much out of it as we do. We do not need to be reminded of what is normal. We want to think about what is beyond normal, what breaks the normal down, what splits the obvious apart. We want to know what we, at the moment, cannot.
Music offers windows, and music opens doors. And we do not see these windows and doors until we have stepped out of what we know. But isn't this how we ought to live? Descending into the darkest recesses of his soul, Schubert talks to us about the deepest mysteries of existence, how we walk in a wisp, a gossamer veil stretched out between us and the other side of time. He romanced eternity.
As do we all. Every day is a balance, an edge perched on the borders of presence and absence, a thin line of reality and ultimate destiny.
Thanks, Franz Schubert, even if you didn't intend to do so, for showing us that life is more than life itself.
