"Endless glaciers under my feet make my heart throb.  I feel like I should discover every corner of the Himalayas."  So said South Korean climber Kim Chang-ho who, along with seven other climbers, perished in a fierce storm in the Himalayas a few days ago.  Kim belonged to the rarefied group of mountain climbers who not only had ascended the fourteen highest peaks on the planet, they had done so without the aid of artificial oxygen.  He was amazing.

    Sadly, however, Kim will never see any more of the Himalayas.  His earthly life has ended and he has gone to his eternal home.  And, as the twelve chapter of Ecclesiastes notes, "Mourners go about in the streets."  Only life and the mountains remain.

     Some of my atheist friends suggest that we don't really need to know why things are, only that they are.  Maybe.  Yet when I confront death and dying, particularly in someone pursuing something which I, though in much lesser form, once did, I cannot help but wonder:  what is the point?
     The answer is pretty clear:  the point is that there is a point.  And we wouldn't be able to deny this unless there was.  Nothing "just is."
     Rest well, Kim.

     Although I have written recently about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in the West Indies, I write today about the series of earthquakes and tsunamis that have been battering the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.  One wonders why such destruction visits people who are least prepared to deal with it.  Jared Diamond's thesis in his magisterial Guns, Germs, and Steel aside, I struggle constantly with wondering how one race of 

people, that is, whites of European descent, has managed to end up with the best land and most money, often to the detriment of everyone else on the planet.  Although I have my beliefs about God, history, and purpose, I'm not sure if I will ever fully put them together.  All I can do is weep over the pain, do what I can to ameliorate it, and pray.

     So do I invite you to do the same.  We will never unravel the fullness of divine purpose in this life.  We are finite beings.  But we can pray to the person from all meaning comes and without whom the world would have no point.
     Which would we prefer:  meaningless havoc in a meaningless universe or meaningless havoc in a meaningful universe?  Although the latter seems paradoxical and contradictory, it is not:  we cannot insist we can make any sense of anything unless we first agree that we live in a meaningful medium in which to do so.

     No doubt you've heard of Billy Graham.  Before he passed away last year at the age of 99, Billy Graham had, by most counts, preached the gospel to more than anyone on the planet, living or dead.  Most estimates ranged in the hundreds of millions.  For over forty years, he traveled the globe, sharing what he considered to be good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, with whomever would listen.
     I believed strongly in Graham's mission, and I believed strongly in his work.  I applauded his efforts to tell people about the love of God in Jesus Christ.  After over close to three decades of supporting his organization, however, my wife and I, sadly, have stopped.  Why?  Primarily because of the words and actions of his son, Franklin Graham, who took charge of the organization when his father "retired" in his eighties.  

     Franklin's seemingly blind and unwavering support of American president Donald Trump, regardless of what the president says or does, all in the service, for the most part, of ensuring a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, is, to me, an extraordinarily pragmatic approach to morality.  Although as his father did, Franklin preaches the gospel in very black and white terms (one either believes in Jesus or one does not), he seems to set this aside when he enters the realm of politics.
     Among other things, I find Franklin's assertions that all progressives are "godless" and America is a "moral cesspool," highly offensive and, moreover, extremely demeaning to all who hold political and moral viewpoints different from his.  Such remarks are entirely inconsistent with the gospel of God's love that he preaches.  I occasionally wonder whether Franklin and I read the same Bible.
     Thanks, Billy Graham, for your tireless efforts to tell the world about the meaningfulness of Jesus.
  

     Despite what the U.S. president claims about the nation's rescue efforts in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, most observers will agree that, over a year after this frightening storm swept across the island, much, much more remains to be done.  It's heartbreaking, really, absolutely heartbreaking.

     A couple of months ago, I was sitting next to a young woman, a native of Puerto Rico, as we flew from Madison, Wisconsin, to Chicago.  She told that she had just completed a year of study in the States and was now on her way home.  She couldn't wait to see her family again.

     "Has your family been without electricity?" I asked.  "For three months," she said.  "It was hard."  This young woman's family is among the fortunate ones.  Too many other people still lack electricity, not to mention access to clean drinking water.  For a country that is part of one of the most powerful nations on earth, this is particularly tragic.  What happened?
     Continue to pray for the people of Puerto Rico.  Although I refrain, in this instance, from treading into questions of "why, God?" I nonetheless invite all of us to embrace the fractured mystery of living in a broken world and pray for those who have felt, with too intense a force, its horrific malfunctions.

     1492.  It's one of the most pivotal years in human history.  Humans of two hemispheres, neither of whom had been aware of the other, suddenly were, almost overnight, finding themselves confronting worlds that literally blew their collective minds.  No one would ever be the same.
     Sadly, however, although 1492 may have been a momentuous and lucrative year for many Europeans, it was a terrible one for the natives of the Americas. 1492 marked the beginning of a lengthy European oppression and exploitation of the peoples of the Americas, a run of centuries of difficulty and pain, pain which, in some cases, continues, in multiple forms, to this day.
     The worst of it is that in too many instances this exploitation was justified in the name of Christianity.  It was an awful stain on the love of God.
     Historian Erna Paris once observed that, "Attaching God to history is the most powerful nationalism of all."  Whenever we try to juxtapose God and the history we are trying to create, we blur a line we cannot possibly cross:  the boundary between what is here and what is not, the difference between the visible speculations of finitude and the hidden certitudes of infinity.  We falsely think we can speak for God.
     But God, whether he is talking about politics, economics, religion, or inculturation, does not need us to speak for him.  He doesn't need us to give the planet purpose or meaning.  We rather need to talk less and listen more.  It's difficult to hear someone talk when we're busy spouting off.
     Love Columbus, or hate him; either way, use this Columbus Day to remind yourself of your so very limited view of what is real and true.

     Karl Marx.  For some, Marx's name conjures thoughts of darkness, predation, and terror.  For others, his name stirs thoughts of revolt, rebellion, and justice.  To the die hard capitalist, Marx is anathema; to many people living under constant economic exploitation and oppression, his name is a beacon of hope, words in which they see glimmers of equity and righteousness.
     Like many things, the truth falls somewhere in between. In Marx's seminal work, Das Kapital, he skillfully dissects the shortcomings of capitalism, noting, rightly, that by its very nature the capitalism breeds inequity, that in its elevation of economic freedom above all else, it overlooks that various cultural contexts prevent everyone from enjoying the fruits of these freedoms.  Writing in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and the many injustices it spawned, Marx understood very well the logic that would, one day, drive capitalism into the ground:  people understand exploitation in vastly different ways.
     Not to say that Marxism is perfect or the ideal solution to economic oppression.  It is not.  But it's far from the total abnegation to which many assign it.  It's easy for those in power to criticize the longings of those subject to them.  It's not so easy for those who are under the thumb of oppression to believe that the oppressors have their good in mind.
     Many years ago, someone told me that, "God ordained capitalism."  Given all the pain that Western capitalism has brought upon the rest of the world, the pain of slavery, imperialism, and sordid monopolistic activity, I find this statement to be rather odd.  Do we really know what, in the big picture, God ultimately chooses?
     One thing we do know.  As God loved the world, so he wants us to love each other.  And we do not need to do this through one economic system only.

     Are you poor?  If you are living in the West, you are, relative to the rest of the planet, probably not.  Although you may be living from paycheck to paycheck, you likely have sufficient food and a reliable roof over your head.  In having these things, you have much more than billions of our fellow human beings.
     And even if you are not living in the West, you probably have sufficiency.  That is, you have enough with which to live.  Happily, according to most studies, the number of people living in extreme poverty has dramatically declined in the last ten years.  Despite what we may read, progress is being made in lifting people out of abject poverty.
     It's a wonderful and beautiful thing.  I write today about a different type of poverty, a different take on being poor.  It is being poor in spirit.  In our race to share technology with the rest of the planet, we often forget that although we do ourselves and our fellow humans a tremendous favor in doing so, we ought not to forget the greatest poverty of all:  a poverty of soul.
     The founders of the great religions of the world recognized this acutely.  They didn't encourage us to become materially rich; they rather encouraged us to become spiritually full and philosophically complete.  They knew that, in the biggest possible picture, this was far more important, indeed, infinitely more important than how much technology we have or how much money we have in our bank account.
     As Jesus asked us in his telling of the parable of the rich landowner (see the twelfth chapter of the gospel of Luke), "What good does it do you if you gain the world, but lose your soul?"