As Thanksgiving ends and most of us, at least in the West, proceed, ready or not, into the Christmas season (although many retailers, regrettably, opened for shopping on Thanksgiving Day), we do well to remember the essence of the moment before us.  It is not about shopping, it's not about supplying our loved ones with as many material goods as we can afford, it's not about draining out bank accounts to throw a lavish party, it's not about diverting every thought into an experience that in most households lasts barely an hour, if that, but rather it is to remember that, as Jesus put it in Mark 1:15, "The kingdom of God is at hand."
     Though we may cringe at the idea of a kingdom in the largely democratic West, we miss the point if we summarily dismiss Jesus' words.  He is not talking about a kingdom in the sense of knights and castles and hegemony but rather a kingdom of the heart, a kingdom that calls us to love, to care, to move ourselves toward inner transformation of mind, body, and soul, and be better citizens of the planet and the greater realities in which it sits.  Jesus' kingdom is not one of arrogance and might, not a kingdom of dogma and exclusivity, but a kingdom of welcome and grace, a kingdom of community, a kingdom of community rooted in a profound truth:  God, the ultimate and overwhelmingly real beginning and repository of existential meaning, the great and longed for Emmanuel, the Christ, is with us, with us now, tomorrow, next year, and forevermore.

      As America prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving, I find myself giving thanks for, among other things, its religious diversity.  Although on one hand I do not agree with everything that adherents of other religions believe, although I might at times wish that other people believed what I believe, on the other hand, I am grateful for what I learn from examining and studying the countless other spiritual perspectives that dot the American landscape.  If, as many theologians have observed, all truth is God's truth, then we ought to be able to find truth, that is, that which is consistent with and accurately reflective of reality, reality, that is, perceived physically as well as spiritually, in a wide range of metaphysical (and, at times, materialistic) viewpoint.  Americans live in a massively large and variegated country, one with plenty of room for many, many worldviews, each of which represent, in their own way, uniquely human expressions of the perennial human quest for meaning.  We don't need to agree with them to learn from them.
     In short, this Thanksgiving, in addition to giving thanks for the many familial, intellectual, and material blessings that flow through your life, give thanks to God.  Give thanks to God that, despite the fractured state of modern spirituality, he is nonetheless able to communicate and present himself--and his son Jesus--in just about any place you look for him.
     Wherever and whoever you are this Thanksgiving, be grateful for the grace and ubiquity of God.

     A couple of weeks ago, the morning of November 17, a young man named Nicholas Mevoli attempted to break the existing record for free diving, that is, diving as far down as one could get without using any artificial aids or additional oxygen.
     The record was 70 meters; Mevoli was aiming for 72.  When he reached 69 meters, however, for reasons no one knows, he paused, seemed to hesitate, then continued down.  He made his way back to the surface safely.  However, once he removed his goggles, he began to cough up blood.  He died an hour and a half later.  It's a tragic story.
     What struck me most about this story was the achingly painful fact of a life lost so young for a relatively arcane reason, a life that was once infused with the most fervent of dreams, the most compelling of drives, now a life over, forever.  Many young lives are of course lost every moment of every day, most of them, unfortunately, from causes that are preventable, such as hunger, disease, and accidents.  Yet this lost life seems, at least to me, to take on a hue and shade of its own, a life, and a short one at that, spent pursuing a goal of which very few people in the world are aware, a life devoted to vision of which only a handful of humanity even cares about.  And now it's over.
     This is not to say that Mevoli's life was not important or valuable.  If God exists, it surely was.  We mourn his passing.  It is to say, however, that as the writer of Ecclesiastes 11 reminds us, seek adventure, seek challenge; yet remember this:  life is ultimately out of our hands.  We walk in a shadow we do not make.
     So I conclude:  thanks be to God for existential purpose--and for presenting himself in his son Jesus for us to see it.

     Reviewing Jeff Chu's recently published and favorably received Does Jesus Really Love Me?  A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America, Lauren Sandler, a confirmed (and straight) atheist, writes, "[this book] lays bare a vast national offense:  valuing identity over experience, judgment over love."
     Ms. Sandler's first comment makes an intriguing point.  Do we construct our sense of self on the basis of an unchanging dynamic of person, or on the basis of our experience?  Or put another way, using more technical language, do we construct ourselves ontologically or existentially?
     In truth, it is both.  We are born with a certain set of genes and its attendant characteristics, but we become ourselves as what we inherit responds to what we experience.  We cannot completely escape the tendencies and mannerisms to which our genes incline us, but we also cannot totally evade our own capacities to shape or direct such things through the effects of what we encounter in our life experience.
     If I am understanding Ms. Sandler correctly, it is our experience that is more formative and significant in determining who we are.  She may well be right, in part; the "nature vs. nurture" argument will never be resolved fully.  What we can say, however, is that whether identity or experience are prime, our call is to love each person identity, experience, and all, unconditionally.  In the end, each person is a human being, made in God's image and imbued with nearly infinite worth and value.  There is purpose in why each person is here.

     Have you seen Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors?  Made in the Eighties, it's portrays a opthamologist who, late in his career, has an affair with another woman and, one day, this woman threatens to tell his wife.
     Alarmed beyond measure, the doctor becomes so desperate that he summons his brother, a man who has spent his life on the other side of the law, for advice.  When his brother mentions that this woman "can be gotten rid of," the doctor is aghast.  "How could we?"  he asks.
     A few nights later, however, he relents and tells his brother to go ahead with it.  I won't tell you how the story works out, but I share this much to make a few points about the way the doctor saw the world.  As he wrestles with his dilemma, he asks a rabbi (he is Jewish) friend of his for advice.
     You and I see the universe in very different ways, the rabbi replies.  You see it as cold, heartless, and indifferent, and I see it as pervaded with a moral structure, an unbending moral code.  Indeed, he adds, "I couldn't go on if I didn't believe that at the heart of the universe there is love and forgiveness."
     If you ever watch the movie, however, you will see how the doctor's worldview breaks down, badly.  On the one hand, he insists that the universe is without heart or meaning; but on the other hand, he insists with equal fervor that, at least initially, killing his mistress is absolutely wrong.  But in a meaningless world, how can he really make a moral judgment?  It's impossible.
     As the rabbi notes, morality can only exist if there is moral structure.  And there can only be moral structure if we have meaning.  For if we or the world have no reason to be here, nothing else does, either.

     Earlier this year, I commented on a movie, God on Trial, based on a book by Elie Wiesel.  Today, I return to it, as a recent conversation I had about it brought one more thought to mind.  At one point in the movie, one of the Jewish inmates at Auschwitz makes the point that God is not good, but merely "on our side."  In other words, the only reason a Jew might say that God is good is because he has made them his covenant people and is therefore "for" them.  If God wasn't on their side, then perhaps he would not be good.
     The man makes a good point.  Is God not therefore on the side of those who do not believe in him?  Are those who do not believe in him simply doomed to lives of misery and pain?  If this is the case, and if God supposedly loves all of his creation, is he really in fact good after all?
     Let's look at this from another angle.  If there is no God, if there is really just you and me in a vast and insouciant universe, where do we get off asserting that anything is good or, for that matter, bad?  How can we know?  In an accidental and indifferent universe, we have no way to determine such things.  We can assert certain things are good, but we do so in a moral vacuum:  there's no reason why we cannot just as easily say that these things are bad.
     Whether God is good, however, does not matter nearly as much as whether he is there.  Indeed, if we experience any sort of goodness at all, we cannot say that God, if he indeed exists, is altogether bad.  But if God is not there, we cannot explain why we experience good or bad other than to say that they just happen and therefore mean nothing.  It's an exercise in epistemological futility.
     Better--and more logical, as we are reasoning beings--to say that God is there and is good than to say that he is not and not even know what good is.

     Does challenging one's faith undermine it?  Some would say so, others would say not.  During the atheist discussion group which I attend once a month, I made the point that I would rather see a person of faith challenged on what she believes, to be forced to work through why she believes what she believes, rather than live her life without really thinking about why she has faith.  That is one reason why, I added, I attend the group, to dialogue with and explore the other side.  We can often learn significant things from views with which we do not agree.
     "But doesn't this tend to subvert the cause of faith?" one person asked me.  To this, I said that if a person is reasonably grounded in the fundamentals of her faith, and has (or has had) meaningful objective as well as subjective experiences and evidences of her faith, she can only benefit from such stretching.  Whenever we are living in a box, be it one of faith or unbelief, we cannot see what's outside of it.  We do not know what else there is to know.  Better that we be exposed to what is beyond or outside of what we believe than to live our lives ignorant of what our faith really means.  If all we have is our faith in a world that only our faith has created, that is really all we will ever have, that is, faith that has no genuine credibility or foundation or staying power.
     Besides, if indeed God is ultimate truth, he ought to be able to withstand any challenge raised against him.  To paraphrase Augustine's famous observation that, "I believe that I may understand," I suggest, "Believe, but explore; explore, but believe."  A real faith need not fear the world, for the world is in truth the work of God.
     So, I concluded, if my faith cannot successfully surmount questions about its veracity, then it is not a faith worth having and, if this is the case, real truth remains to be found.  And truth, after all, in its purest form, is the most important thing.